


Dreams You Left Behind

by ohhstark



Series: bulletproof [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, F/M, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Polyamory, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Recreational Drug Use, Resolved Romantic Tension, Resolved Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, and that's all i have to say about it, it'll probably be a long road before it's resolved, so just to keep things interesting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 19:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 49,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8909506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhstark/pseuds/ohhstark
Summary: “When are you going to stop making me pay for something that happened five years ago?” It lacks the heat Hancock was expecting. It's all soft, gentle probing and it sends his mind into free fall. Fear and anger bubble inside of him, sliding heavy and icy down his spine. For a moment, he lets the silence between them linger. He lets it fester. He deserves this. “It ain’t you I’m punishing, Nicky,” he says. And isn't that just the rub of it. All this time, all these years he's had no one to blame but himself.**Sequel to "I Got Stamina"**





	1. Meet Cute

Let it never be said that John Hancock lived a sheltered life. He has seen some shit. Families thrown out of the great Green Jewel for nothing so much as the texture of their skin and red eyes. Civilized people turning against their neighbors, their _friends_ , because someone in a suit and tie told them to. 

But this is different, somehow. When you’re the mayor of the most notorious settlement in the Commonwealth, you find yourself desensitized by all the blood and shit and general fuckery that chase shadows on the walls. It probably doesn’t help that he inhales his body weight in chems every other day, but who cares about that? Certainly not Fahr. Certainly not Daisy; who’s become like an adopted mother to him. No one cares about inane shit like that here, but it doesn’t change the facts. Which are, in no particular order:

He’s fucking tired.  
The chems keep him in a pleasant enough daze, but his new and improved ghoulish insides burn through them pretty damned fast. He’s spent his whole life chasing high after high, but they never seem to get any closer.  
He wasn’t made for ivory towers and golden-gilded crowns. 

So when Nicky fucking Valentine busts through his doors with a battered dame clutched to his chest, he feels that telltale kick in his chest. A flutter of a promise for adventure, for anything more than these suffocating walls. 

He rushes forward, scandalized gasps trailing behind him. He pushes Finn aside, the bastard. He’s got this nasty, sharp gleam in his eyes. And he’s practically foaming at the mouth at the sight of the bloodied girl in Nick’s arms. 

“Finn, back the fuck up and give them some Goddamn room!” Hancock shouts, a feral growl coloring his words. Surprising, that, but he doesn’t have the time to think too much on it. He shoulders his way past Finn and grabs Nick by the elbow. His trench coat is warm and dusty to the touch. 

“John,” Nick says with a wry twist of his lips that doesn’t quite reach his glowing yellow eyes. There’s something off about him, but for the life of him, he can’t figure out what. 

“Nicky,” Hancock replies and it feels less like a greeting between friends than he could hope. Nick swallows, an old reflex he’d never quite shaken, and looks down at the woman. He glances down at her too and his stomach turns when he sees how pale she is. He isn’t a doctor, but he knows how it looks. Feels it like a bucket of ice cold water dumped and sloshing around inside of him. “Shit, she looks bad.”

“Normally, I’d say you were dead wrong,” Nick says, a touch of hysteria in the grim smile he manages. “But in this case…” 

“Don’t worry,” Hancock reassures him and immediately starts leading him towards the Memory Den. Finn is gone and their audience consists of the guard stationed by Daisy’s and the old ghoul herself. She fixes him with a worried, tight-lipped look that sends his insides into free fall. “The Doc will fix her up.” He says it with conviction that he doesn’t feel. This woman, whoever she is, looks like she’s at death’s door. Normally, he wouldn’t care, but it’s Nick and it’s obvious to everyone with eyes that _he_ cares. 

He tries not to think about the tight ball of jealousy that forms in his heart at that realization. He brushes it away and pushes it down. Deep, deep inside where the bright, happy memories of his mother’s smile reside. Inside that box that he never fucking touches. His very own Pandora’s Box.

The Memory Den is blessedly empty as he pushes open the front doors for them. Irma is, per her usual habits, lounging on one of the couches in the lobby, but she jumps to her feet as soon as she sees them. 

“God, Nick, what have you gotten into this time?” Her brown eyes are wide with curiosity and her lips are twisting at the sight of all the blood. 

“Nothing but trouble. You know me, Irma,” Nick quips. He smiles at her, but it’s thin and punctuated by the slight waiver of his voice on her name. Irma just nods and motions for them to follow her. 

“Been pretty slow around here lately, Hancock. Any ideas about that?” Irma leads them down the narrow line of cobbled stone steps down into the basement where Doctor Amari is usually holed up. It’s been awhile since he’s stepped foot in the Memory Den, but it’s just as he remembers it. 

“The Institute has a hard on for The Railroad and is gunning for them every chance they get. It’s enough to make anyone cautious. Dez isn’t stupid. She knows how to lie low.” 

“I’m not so sure,” Irma says and he’s reminded that she isn’t just a wallflower. She’s got a brain beneath that pretty coif of blonde hair. She rounds the corner of the doorway and hesitates a moment when she takes in the scene before her. Nick doesn’t stop. Just plows right past her. Hancock allows himself a little smirk before he follows after him. 

“It’s been awhile Nick. Are you finally collecting on that joke about your servos I made at your expense all those years ago?” Doctor Amari says. It lacks humor and falls flat in the sullen silence of the basement room. She takes one, long look at the woman and crosses the room to clear everything off the table next to the doorway. It’s covered in odd tools and Rad-Away and Med-x. She takes a spare box from beneath the table and carefully stows the drugs in it. The tools she tosses on the floor beneath the table. 

“You realize you’d be better off taking her to Diamond City?” Amari says as she clears a space to put the woman on the table. Nick nods and there’s something oddly dark in the gleam of his yellow eyes. 

“Goodneighbor was closer. I can’t-we can’t afford to lose this one, Doc,” Nick says. Dread collects in a thick, viscous pool in the pit of his stomach. Nick is a lot of things. Stubborn with a heart of gold and a clever mind. One thing he isn’t: dramatic. If he’s calling this stranger important, then she must be. 

Amari nods and motions for him to lay her out on the now semi-clean table top. Nick does so and Hancock tries not to focus on the reverence in his hands or the sad smile Nick gives her when her eyes open. They’re a bright, striking green amidst the pale white of the rest of her face. She holds out a hand to him, her fingers trembling as they reach for him. He takes her hand and steps to the side, out of Amari’s way. Her chest swells with a shallow breath that catches thickly in her lungs. 

Amari takes a deep, steadying breath before nodding to both of them. Her sharp gaze turns to steel as she steps up beside the table, beside the woman. She fishes a Stimpak out of the pocket of her lab coat and sticks the woman with it. She tosses the empty syringe aside and crosses the room to wheel over a small rolling table with a plethora of surgical tools on it. 

“Mayor Hancock, if you would hold her legs. This will not be pretty,” she says, picking up surgical scissors. 

True to her word, it isn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to my new Fallout 4 story! This is a continuation of my previous fic "I Got Stamina." It won't be necessary for you to have read that, for now, at least, but it will definitely become prevalent later on. There was a lot of timey wimey stuff going on that may very well confuse you in later chapters. Hopefully I can write it in such a way that you can get the gist even without reading the first fic. That's the goal anyway lol. 
> 
> For my returning readers, THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR THE CONTINUED SUPPORT!!! I am blown away by the response and I really, really appreciate everything you guys have done whether it's to leave kudos or comments or subscribe or bookmarking the fic. I love you guys and I don't deserve you! Hopefully you'll enjoy this part of the fic as much as the first arc!
> 
> Come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://ohhnewts.tumblr.com) if you want. :)


	2. Chapter 2

Goodneighbor has always been...off at this time of the morning. Different in a way that belies that this is a home, despite what his brother might want to think. It isn’t a den of sin, not all of the time anyway. And this, that first hour before the sun crests the horizon, when the sky is just beginning to brighten. When the birds start to chirp and sing and dance on the barren, irradiated trees. When it feels like the Earth is empty and he’s the only person left in it. This is when he steps out of the Memory Den and settles into an exhausted lean against the wall outside.

Everyone else is still in bed, sleeping off the night’s adventures next to a warm body or a half-empty bottle of Gwinnett. And today? Today it just feels like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. He hasn’t slept, which he supposes is most of the problem. He hasn’t had a hit of Jet since yesterday morning either, but he can’t quite seem to reach in his pocket and draw out the canister, no matter how much he wants to.

Instead, he sticks the cigarette he’s been twirling through his fingers into his mouth and lights it in one swift twist of his wrist. He can still hear the echo of her screams. 

Nora, he reminds himself. Her name is Nora. And with a sick turn of his lips, he realizes he’s probably more familiar with her screams than his own. Seven grueling hours. Of keeping as tight a grip on her legs as he could. Of watching Amari dig and dig into her flesh to fish out the stray scraps of metal and shards of glass from her wounds. Of watching Nora’s eyes roll up into her head and her body falling limp on their makeshift operating table. 

_“We’re losing her, Doc,” Nick says._

_“I know!” Doctor Amari replies through her gritted teeth. There’s a bright sheen of sweat on her brow. Stray tendrils of dark hair have fallen out of her tight bun and she’s almost as pale as her patient. She looks ready to give up, and honestly he wouldn’t blame her if she did, but she just takes a breath and keeps working. Steady as a fucking rock, this one._

Hancock runs a shaking hand over the side of his face. Takes in a long, deep drag of his cigarette. And nearly jumps out of his skin when a metal hand snags the cigarette from him. When he turns his head, he meets Nick’s dark yellow gaze. He feels bared in a way that makes him shift on his feet. Every nook and cranny of his mind free for Nick to sate his curiosity, if he ever had any to begin with, for a lifetime. It’s not fair, he knows that, but it feels like instinct, like an old habit he just can’t seem to shake, to try and hide from him.

“Cap for your thoughts?” Nick says, his voice a gentle rumble in the quiet morning. He shrugs in response, trying and probably failing, to shield himself from Nick’s gentle probing. It’s like there’s too many things to say. He knows there’s not enough caps in the world to pay for all the thoughts he has. About Nick. About Nora, whoever in the Hell she is. About the two of them. Together. Apart. His mind is a fucking mess. Just another reason he needs to sleep or take a hit or both. 

But he finds he has to say something. 

“You know me, Nicky. Never been one to think too much,” he says. Because it’s as good a place to start as any. Because these words, at least, don’t _hurt_. 

“Well you better start thinking, Mayor Hancock, because that woman back there? She’s special. And she’s gonna want to talk to you when she wakes up,” Nick says. His voice is sharp and Hancock tamps down on his instincts to run. Until Nick’s words finally soak in. 

“Why would she want to talk to me?” he asks. It’s not a question, not really. With his face and his reputation, it’s a perfectly valid thing to ask. The only people who want to talk to him are drifters and thieves and con artists. It’s just a feeling, but this woman doesn’t seem to fit any of those profiles.

He meets Nick’s eyes. Two pinpricks of light shrouded in dark smoke. And those lips of his, cracked at the corners and turned up into what can only be the beginnings of a smile. It’s razor sharp and full of knowing and he finds himself unable to look away, no matter how much he wants to.

“A perfect stranger willing to help out an old friend and his partner. You don’t think that would warrant a conversation?” Partner. Old friend. Words on top of words on top of words. His fingers curl in on themselves. Fists with no outlet for his sudden anger. It’s always been this way between them. Nick, the knowing Synth, and him-the great Mayor McDonough’s incompetent younger brother with nothing but fluff between his ears. He’s so fucking tired of it. Of all of it. 

“Not what I’m saying, Valentine,” Hancock says, his voice a low growl through his gritted teeth. There’s a headache brewing at the backs of his eyes. With the sky now a robin’s egg blue, shot through with pink and orange, it’s only a matter of time before the sun will start to peek up over the crowded rooftops of Goodneighbor. He wants to be asleep before that happens. 

“John,” Nick says and God damn him, but it’s the best thing in the world to hear Nick say his name like that. Like he isn’t just some punk with his head buried in a chem cloud. Like he isn’t the infamous mayor of Goodneighbor. 

Like he’s just a man. A man he knew once upon a time. 

Nick touches his shoulder. It’s a graze, really. The barest hint of pressure before he pulls away again and stubs out the cigarette on the concrete in front of the Memory Den. 

“When are you going to stop making me pay for something that happened five years ago?” It lacks the heat Hancock was expecting. It's all soft, gentle probing and it sends his mind into free fall. Fear and anger bubble inside of him, sliding heavy and icy down his spine. For a moment, he lets the silence between them linger. He lets it fester. Lets it ache and burn and melt through the very heart of him.

He deserves this. 

“It ain’t you I’m punishing, Nicky,” he says and starts to walk back towards the State House. He doesn’t know what’s worse. That Nick doesn’t follow him. Or that he keeps waiting, hoping that he will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More back story stuff!! Thank you guys so much for your continued support. I know this one is a bit different, and I know it's moving pretty slow so far, but I promise the action will pick up. I just finished up chapter 5 this morning, and I'll probably start chapter 6 tomorrow or this weekend. 
> 
> I'd love to hear some thoughts on this chapter...I know I'm being extremely vague about things between Nick and Hancock, but I promise I won't be keeping you in the dark forever! Also would love to hear what you guys think about the chapters from Hancock's POV. He's fun to write for and I'm so glad I'm finally getting the chance to narrate the story through him too. 
> 
> I love you guys! Thank you again. :)


	3. Chapter 3

She wakes up screaming. Her eyes blown wide in terror and her fingers clawing at empty air. For a terrible, impossible moment, she thinks she might be back in Vault 111. She’s so cold, her teeth are chattering and her body is wracked with involuntary shudders. She stares into the void, can feel it staring back at her, inside of her.

And then her brain catches up with the rest of her. She takes in the dull, neutral white of the ceiling and the gentle give of a mattress beneath her bloodied fingernails. She takes in the electrical whine of the overhead lights. She isn’t back in the vault. She isn’t going to see her husband die again. Or her baby taken away, his shrieks of fear ringing in her ears. 

She closes her mouth, chokes down on the screams. Swallows them down, down into her lungs and thinks. She remembers being shot. She remembers the bump and sway of Nick carrying her to Goodneighbor. But the last few days, if it had only been days, are a black hole in her mind. She scoots up into a sitting position, her arms trembling with the effort, and shoves the stark white sheets over her legs and down onto the bed next to her. Her left thigh is wrapped in thick, white gauze. There’s no sign of blood on the wound or on the sheets. She turns her arms around, catching them from all angles. Her skin is marred with shallow lacerations that sting in the biting-cold air. Her entire body protests as she swings her legs up and over the edge of the bed. 

“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” a familiar voice, like smoke and whiskey, fills the room. She nearly jumps out of her skin when she looks up and sees him. His hat is tipped low, hiding most of his face from sight, but it’s him. Of course it’s him. She’d know that red frock coat and half-cocked grin anywhere. Her stomach turns and her mouth runs dry. The question she’d been thinking since the moment she awoke in this life fills her mind.

Do you remember me? Do you remember us?

“Hancock?” she says. It’s little more than a whisper and when he doesn’t respond, she wonders if he heard her at all. She clears her throat, about to say something else, but he lifts his head before she can. She’s never seen this look on his face. Something more akin to the look of a wild animal than a man. His gray eyes are glittering and his lips are pulled back from his teeth in a grimace colored with distrust.

“How the Hell do you know my name, sister?” 

Cold, thick fear runs through her at that. She’d counted on him remembering too, no matter how hard she’d tried to tell herself that it might not have happened. 

“You don’t remember me?” she says and she doesn’t know if she’s asking him so much as stating a fact. She’d hoped for so long that it seemed silly now to think that it could have turned out any different. Nick didn’t remember her. None of the others remembered her. But this felt worse, somehow, like the sharp point of a knife poised to her heart. Every time she took a breath, she could feel it pressed to her. Waiting to pierce through her and carve marks into her skin in the shape of his smile, of his bruising touch.

“Nope. I don’t know you from Atom, Vault Dweller,” he says. His words are barbed and sharp in a way that she’s never heard before. The urge to go to him, to touch him, to make him see is so sharp that she has to anchor herself to the bed. She wraps her hands around the metal frame and grips it tight enough to make her bones ache. 

“I’m sorry,” she says to start, because what other logical beginning is there for this new and frightening introduction to the man she’d loved, still loves? 

“Why don’t you just start at the beginning, sister? Why did Nick have to haul you half-way through Boston to my front door?” 

“We were already on our way here when we ran into some Raiders. They pinned us, split us up. Nick got out unharmed, but-,” she started. She could still remember her terror. The adrenaline running through her system and the burning bite of the bullet through her thigh. 

“I wouldn’t say unharmed, doll,” Nick’s voice from the doorway cuts off her train of thoughts. She pushes her memories to the back of her mind and manages a smile for him that still feels cold and wrong on her face. His dark yellow eyes are as warm as ever as he takes in the sight of her. He grins back and enters the room, a jacket tucked over his arm. He places the jacket around her shoulders, the weight of it warm and heavy against her. It smells like dirt and ash and blood and sweat, but she doesn’t have the luxury to care. “I’m glad you’re awake again, partner.”

“Me too. I was just telling Hancock here about what happened out there.” She can almost hear the creak of Nick’s metal frame as he turns to look at Hancock. There’s something charged in the room now, something that smells like the wind and rain and lightning before a rad storm. She doesn’t say anything as she takes in this new, tense energy between them. 

“Bit early for you to be up and about, John,” Nick says. The words aren’t scathing, not exactly, but close enough that Hancock visibly winces beneath the weight of them. Had this tension always been between them and she just never noticed? Or was this something new? Something that hadn’t been there before? Some after-effect of what they’d all been through together, even if they didn’t, couldn’t, remember?

Part of her was curious. But the other part of her didn’t want to know. Not yet, at least. She didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever it was between them and she doubted that would get Hancock to trust her any faster. 

So she just cleared her throat and held out her hand for Nick to take. Her insides were twisted with hunger pains and her mouth must have been dry enough to cook mole rat chunks in. Once she took care of the needs of her body, she’d be able to focus on the problem between Nick and Hancock. Until then….

“Know where I could find a decent meal around here? Preferably paired with a stiff drink?” she said. Even though she knew. Even though she was as familiar with The Third Rail as she was with its owner. 

“You could pay a visit to The Third Rail. I hear the guy who runs the joint is a real charmer,” Hancock says from his spot by the doorway. She glances up at him, not expecting a response at all, not from him. His head is turned to the floor when she looks at him, his face covered in shadow. But then he lifts his face and the smile he gives her, hesitant and small though it is, makes all of it worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys had a wonderful holiday! For a late present, here is the new chapter! I'm currently working on Chapter 6 and am hoping to knock out a few more over the course of this week. They're all still in Goodneighbor, which is crazy lol, but here we are....
> 
> Thank you for the reviews, kudos, subscriptions, and bookmarks. They all feed my muse, who has an unfortunately large ego to fill. Can't wait to hear what you think of this one! Any theories on what's going on between Nick and Hancock?


	4. Chapter 4

Nick is staring at her. She can feel those dark yellow eyes combing over her slumped shoulders and down turned lips. He’s as good at reading her as he ever was. Ever the Detective. Ever the man searching for answers in a world that didn’t make a lick of sense anymore. She knows he can see right through her. But he doesn’t say anything, just waits her out. 

“You have the patience of a saint, you know that?” she says finally. Nick’s smooth laugh runs through her like electricity. Like a live wire thrashing through her, burning everything it touches. She tries not to think about it too much.

“Patience is a luxury I can afford, doll,” he says, leaning towards her over their rickety table. They’re tucked away into an intimate corner of the room, but she can’t help but feel like they’re being watched from all sides. The guard stationed by the private rooms in the back is keeping a watchful eye on them, his lips turned in a grimace and his hands gripping his shotgun tight enough to make his knuckles white. The ghoul seated at a table across the room is watching them too. His red eyes drift between the two of them like he’s waiting for something to happen. Even Magnolia, crooning in the corner beneath the spotlight, still manages to watch them from her raised dais.

She wonders if Hancock sent word ahead to watch them or if the denizens of Goodneighbor are just that mistrustful of the two of them. Nick because he’s a Synth. Her because she was dragged nearly-dead through the front door only a few days ago and then promptly sent packing to the Memory Den. She doesn’t blame them. They’d all settled here for a reason. Because they’d wandered the Wealth and found it wanting. Found it lacking compassion for thieves and ghouls and mercenaries just trying to make a living like the rest of them. They had a whole lifetime of trusting too much behind them. She gets it, but still hurts. Still burns beneath her skin.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Nora says, trying to push her own thoughts aside for a moment. 

“I’ve got time. _We’ve_ got time, Nora. There’s no rush,” Nick says. She nearly jumps when he rests his hand on top of hers. He tightens his grip on her, his metal fingers curling around her own. It’s a gentle, reassuring weight and she finds that it’s easier to say the words she’s been turning over in her head since she woke up. 

“I think the rest of the bar would disagree,” she says, her lips quirking up into a half-smile that doesn’t quite take off. She clears her throat and continues, watching Nick through the thick film of smoke that he blows out of his mouth. 

“I guess I can start by thanking you,” she says. “If you hadn’t rushed me here like you did, I’d probably be dead.”

“Probably,” he agrees in that deadpan way of his. It’s softened, though, by the gentle press of his hand on hers. Now that the smoke has drifted off to join the thick plumes gathered at the ceiling, she can see the fear in his eyes. A sharp reminder that she did almost die. A reminder, though she couldn’t be completely sure, that if she died now, she wouldn’t be coming back. Not again. Not ever. 

She swallows thickly, her throat aching and her eyes stinging. She takes a moment to down the rest of her drink. It burns on the way down, but it’s good. It steadies her, anchors her in the present even as her nerves start to hum anew. She didn’t want to do this here, now, but it seems as good a time as any.

“So, I noticed things between you and Hancock were a little tense back there. Can I ask what it’s all about?” 

“You saw that, huh?” Nick says, not looking at her for the first time since they sat down. The cigarette dangles between his fingers, almost burnt down to the filter now, untouched and it’s end glowing brightly beneath the dim lights. She nods, because it’s the only thing she can do. She feels dangerously close to something. With her suddenly racing heart and her shaking hands. She thinks, in the silence, that she shouldn’t have asked about it. It feels like a betrayal. 

“Well, half of the story is Hancock’s, you know,” Nick says. And just when she thinks that’s the end of it, he squeezes her hand and puts out the cigarette in the ashtray between them. “But I figure you have a right to some of it, given what you’ve been through with us. For us.” 

He inhales, long and slow and deep. Even though he doesn’t need to anymore. Another one of his human habits, she supposes.

“It started back before John turned ghoul, back when he was still John McDonough and he had the world at his feet. He had women and drugs and all the booze a young man could possibly want, but somehow, he always ended up on my doorstep. It was always after Ellie left for the night, always when his own family were tucked into their beds. His father didn’t like me, made his opinions known as loudly and as often as he possibly could. To the Mayor. To the people of Diamond City. Even to me, on occasion. But Hancock was different. He liked to hang around me, despite what his father said, but he was always careful about it.”

Nora was hanging onto his every word. She’d collected bits and pieces about Hancock’s life before he’d become the Mayor of Goodneighbor, but he’d always been so reticent about it. By the sound of it, she couldn’t exactly blame him.

“So he came in the dead of night when he wasn’t likely to get caught. He told me I was the only one who understood what it was like. To be trapped inside a life you’d never asked for. To be stuffed into a body that didn’t feel like your own,” Nick told her. He had a faraway look in his eyes that broke Nora’s heart. His expression was something torn between longing and sorrow. Whoever said that Synth’s couldn’t feel, couldn’t express themselves the way “real humans” could had obviously never met Nick Valentine. He was about as capable in that department as anyone she’d ever seen. It killed her to see him like this. It killed her to think about Hancock like this. But she didn’t tell him to stop, didn’t dare. God damn her, but she wanted to know. She needed to know.

“And one night, he just stopped showing up. I heard nothing from him, for days, and then his father showed up on my doorstep. I was out, thank God or I would have killed him right there, and left a message with Ellie. He told her that if he ever caught his boy and I together again, he’d kill me. He must have told Hancock the same thing, because he passed me in the street and acted like he didn’t even know me. Wouldn’t engage, wouldn’t even acknowledge that I was there. I don’t know the full story, still don’t, but the next thing I knew he’d disappeared for a few months and then the rumors started. About some young ghoul who’d taken over the mayorship of Goodneighbor by the name of John Hancock. I knew it had to be John. Don’t know how, but I knew.”

He leaned back in his chair and lit another cigarette. She let him take a few deep drags and when she leaned forward to take it, he handed it off to her like he’d been expecting it. She took it gratefully and sighed with relief when she felt the burn of the smoke running down into her lungs. It hurt in the way that everything these days hurt her. 

Because they’d never been made for her to see or touch or experience. And yet, here she was. Smoking this cigarette in this bar with Nick. Thinking about Hancock and wanting to go to him, but realizing that she couldn’t. It was almost cruel, knowing the truth now when she couldn’t do anything about it. 

But there was no un-knowing it. Just as there was no un-knowing the dozens of lifetimes she’d already spent and wasted with him. Moments and days and months she couldn’t get back. Except that she _had_ and that’s the worst part isn’t it?

She has a second shot at this, a real shot. And somehow, she feels like she’s already gone and punched a dozen holes through it. 

She hands the cigarette back to Nick, aware of the gentle slide of her fingers against his own. She smiles at him, but it feels all wrong. Like grinning around broken glass. She tosses a handful of caps on the table, much more than enough to cover their bill and goes to walk past him. He grabs her hand and refuses to let go until she meets his eyes. 

“Give it time, Nora. You just have to give it time,” he tells her. She nods and there are tears collecting at the corners of her eyes as she reaches up to touch his ruined cheek. The edges of her fingers catch in the exposed patches of metal skeleton and wiring and nodes in his cheek, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Just smiles at her in that lopsided way that sends steel-strong hope through her chest. 

It isn’t much, she thinks, but it is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.......a little taste of what Nick and Hancock have going on between them. She'll definitely get the rest of the story later, or at least Hancock's version of events, which will explain a lot more. Can't wait to get to that part!
> 
> Also, I know things are moving extremely slowly so far, but I promise the payoff will be so good. I just got done with a chapter yesterday that just about murdered me to write. It was so, so good and I cannot wait for you guys to read it. But seriously you guys are the best ever. Every kudo, comment, subscribe, and bookmark makes my day. I can't wait to hear what you think of this chapter! <3 
> 
> Check me out on [tumblr](http://ohhstark.tumblr.com) if you want.
> 
> *Also, I might be looking for a beta reader, if anyone is interested. You can message me on tumblr or PM me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/petyrcapaldee). I'm especially looking for someone who might have experience with polyamorous relationships. I have some exposure with it, but I really want to get it right.*


	5. Chapter 5

Hancock finds himself watching the dame, the woman, _Nora_. Despite himself. Or maybe in spite of himself, he thinks darkly as he takes another hit of Jet. It sets the edges of his mouth on fire and he sucks down the whirling spool of chems into the very center of himself. Holds it and feels the world beginning to spin around him. Maybe he’s spinning. Maybe it’s just the center of him, where that bright ball of stuff sits inside of him that’s spinning. Whatever the case, it feels fucking incredible. 

But it doesn’t stop him from watching her, whatever he’d hoped for. She’s got a shine to her that people take to. Even, it seems, the thieves and murderers and philanderers that call his fair city home. She’s been here a total of five days. Five days, and already she’s got them all wrapped around her fingers.

Andy, the guard posted this side of the Old State House, tips his hat as she passes. Seems to pay her some sort of compliment from the way the tips of her ears burn red. She smiles at him anyway, all bright, white teeth and curved lips. Kent Connelly waves to her from across the square in front of the Memory Den. And Daisy stops her with a hand on her arm and she doesn’t bat an eyelash as the two women start walking together. Daisy never lowers her hand, never even seems to consider the possibility that the smooth skin might not want to be touched by a ghoul of all things. But it seems Nick’s girl has more than her own share of secrets because she really doesn’t seem to mind. It’s enough to make his brain hurt. It’s enough to make him want to grab another canister of Jet. Or maybe a tray of Mentats from across the room. 

He doesn’t. That would mean leaving the window. That would mean letting _her_ out of his sight. He trusts Nick, but he doesn’t trust her. Doesn’t trust that smile or the kind stretch of her hand to others in need. There’s something too bright, too big, about her and until he can figure out what that is, he doesn’t intend to let her walk through his streets without being watched. 

He tracks their movements like a hawk and his eyes, doped out as he is, catch on the smooth, freckled column of her throat and the full pout of her pink lips. He watches the play of light on the crown of her hair and the backward tip of her head as she laughs. He can see, objectively, why Nick might have taken up with her. She’s got that Old World beauty to her that no one who grew up this side of the Great War should have. And she has a way with people that he’s never quite seen before. He can admit that he’s curious, but curiosity killed the Deathclaw and he is more than razor sharp edges and serrated teeth. He’s more than some irradiated monster doomed to wander the ‘Wealth. So, for now at least, he’s content to watch and gather as much on her as he can. 

Daisy leaves her at the community fire pits where they do all of their cooking. It’s the first time he notices that she’s been carrying bags looped over her forearms. She hands them over to Manny, their resident cook. He pats her arm with a gleeful, almost child-like sincerity, and she waves him off like she hasn’t just made his day. She was made for this, he realizes. Helping the little people with little errands that turn out to be a fair spot bigger in the grand scheme of things. It’s...well, shit, it’s inspired and he wonders not for the last time what hole in the sky she must have dropped out of. 

He’s never met anyone like her in the Commonwealth and he knows it’s because she’s a Vault Dweller, which is a marvel in and of itself. He’s never met anyone who left a vault. He’s sure it’s happened, but they’ve never been stupid (or brave, depending on how you look at it) enough to grace his doorstep. Until her.

He’s staring now, but he can’t seem to look away from her, even as she turns on her heel and her eyes turn upward. Like she’d known he was watching the whole time. Like she’d just been waiting for the opportunity to meet his gaze. His heart stutters in his chest and maybe it’s the chems, but he feels fucking queasy now. He feels too small and too big in his mottled skin as she keeps staring at him with that barely-there smile clinging to her mouth. And God damn if he doesn’t, inexplicably, _really_ want to kiss her. Kiss the smile from her lips and press it to those bright, white teeth and the freckles showered across her neck trailing down and down and down to drown in whatever fucking mysteries she’s dragged behind her across the Commonwealth. 

Yes, he knows what Nick Valentine sees in this woman, and fuck if he isn’t being dragged down the rabbit hole with him. It’s impossible that he should feel this way, that he should feel this bright, hot, insistent press of desire for her, but there it is anyway. 

She smiles once more, a wistful thing that tugs at his heart. It’s been years, a lifetime really, since anyone looked at him like that, and it sets his fingers to trembling. There’s an impossibly long moment stretched into hours, days, _years_ , and then her eyes fall once more to the ground as she turns to walk away. He slumps against the balcony railing, feeling bereft and lost for an immeasurable moment, until one of his guards sweeps into his office. All clicking heels and hesitancy. And he almost feels bad for whatever sonofabitch that’s stepped in it this time. 

“Mayor Hancock, it’s No-Nose. She’s stirring trouble again,” she tells him. He breathes out, the sound more weary than he cares to admit. 

Heavy wears the crown indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year guys!! 
> 
> This is a bit of a shorter chapter, but the next one will make up for it, I promise. Stuff actually happens and it's one of those chapters that I'm really, really looking forward to you guys reading. So just get through this one and I promise the next one will have some excitement. Like I was telling someone in response to their comment on the last chapter, I'm on chapter 9 right now and fun little fact, they are still in Goodneighbor, which is frankly hilarious. What can I say? This is going to be a Hell of a long story. 
> 
> Next update should be on Wednesday or Thursday, so keep an eye out for it! <3


	6. Chapter 6

It’s been a week now. A week of chatting up the residents and falling into a friendship with Daisy for the second time and helping Manny with the community cooking. It keeps away the worst of it, that burning sensation tucked between her heart and her rib cage that tells her to move, go, run. 

She wasn’t made for waiting. Even as a sheltered housewife and mother hidden away in Sanctuary Hills, it was the one thing she’d never learned to do. 

So maybe that’s why she set up a meeting with Bobbi No-Nose. She doesn’t take Nick. Can’t even bear to look at him over her breakfast of Cram and baked Mutfruit as she plans her escape. 

She slips out of Goodneighbor largely unnoticed except for the nod from one of Hancock’s guards. She’s sure the Mayor himself will know about her little escapades soon, but if she has to soldier on with his burning eyes and stranger’s smile, she might claw her own heart out. It’d be less painful than him watching her with distrust and anger and whatever bitter feeling he’s got curled up inside of him. He wasn’t made for waiting, either, and she knows he must be at his wit’s end with her. Waiting to see what she would do. Waiting to see what she’s made of, made for.

Well, he’ll know soon enough, she thinks with a brazen, internal, smile beneath the scrutiny of Fahrenheit’s shrewd gaze. Nora swings her head between Bobbi and Fahr, her heart sinking in her chest as she lifts her arm. 

She has to give it to Hancock, he’s got some of the best people working for him. Fahr is no exception and Nora’s always liked her. Even if her eyes are more cutting now, more cautious, than they ever were before. And flashing bright green when Nora lines up her shot. It would be so easy, so simple to pull the trigger. 

“Why did you do it, Bobbi? Why did you lie to us?” she says without taking her eyes, or the gun, off of Fahrenheit. Next to Fahr, the other two men shift on their feet. Their hands visibly tighten on their rifles and Nora feels the cold sink of fear into her skin, into her bones.

“I’ve seen the way you look at him. You’d never help me break in here if you’d known who we were stealing from. Everyone either hates him or is in love with him. Pretty safe to say you fall into the second category,” Bobbi says. And it cuts to know that she’s been so obvious. She wonders if he knows too. “He thinks he’s so damn invincible. I wanted to show him he wasn’t.” 

Her heart drops as she thinks on that. If Hancock could hear this…. She sees something flash, there and gone too fast to name, across Fahrenheit’s face and she wonders if she might be thinking along the same lines. It would kill him, to know that this is what his own people think of him. A king grown fat and too-happy on his throne. 

“You’d die to prove a point, No-Nose?” Fahrenheit says from the eaves above and her voice is cut with cold fury enough to make goosebumps run up Nora’s arms.

Beside her, Bobbi huffs a sardonic laugh. There is ice in her veins now. Crawling up and out, slicing like shards of glass through her. She sees red, tastes it pooling at the back of her throat. It feels like the gathering of a storm. 

“Do it,” Bobbi says, her gruff voice nearly a growl with the weight of her blood lust. She knows there is no love lost between her and Hancock. Between her and Hancock’s hired help. She knows it and she knows what it is to feel like nothing but a tool, a cog in the machine. So she swings her arm in a wide arc and just squeezes off a shot before chaos erupts around them. A single crack of her pistol and a howl of pain as Bobbi’s gun is flung loose. 

“Nice work,” Fahr says, her grin feral in the semi-darkness. Beside her, Bobbi has her right hand cradled to her chest and Nora can see the tears of pain trailing tracks down her ruined face. Two of Hancock’s guards trail down the staircase and take her in hand. She doesn’t resist, just goes with them, her face a carefully arranged mask. Nora watches them take her and knows, despite the guilty knot in her chest, that she’ll live. Bobbi was right-handed and without the ability to shoot a gun, she isn’t a threat anymore. She remembers something, from her first life, about pieces on a chessboard and feels something dark and cold pushing up her throat and into her mouth. 

“Hancock will want to see you,” Fahrenheit says as the guards march Bobbi off to face the music. 

_I’m counting on it,_ she doesn’t say. Fahrenheit just watches her for a moment, her lips twitching with questions unasked and her eyes lit up like green fire. Then nods like she’s come to a decision. 

“Don’t make him wait. He isn’t a patient man,” Fahr says, the smile peeking through despite herself. Nora nods and makes her way out of the warehouse, her steps heavy and her heart a dead weight inside of her. She shoves the nausea and the pain down into her stomach, lets it sit there to rot. She’s done a good deed, but it doesn’t feel that way. 

She was never very good at chess anyway.

***

When she walks back through Goodneighbor, she’s immediately taken in hand by Nick. His face is twisted in anger and his servos are blowing out hot air and clicking so fast she’s sure he should be about to overheat. It’s almost like that hidden moment she’s tried so very hard to block from her memories. Right after they’d both dived head-first into Kellogg’s memories. When Nick had looked up at her with Kellogg’s voice between his lips and a sneer that didn’t belong on his face. She’s never seen him so angry. Not even with Eddie Winter. But this is different. It isn’t just anger. There’s a wild panic in those dark yellow eyes of his that sends guilt and shame like heat lightning through her chest. He isn’t just angry. He is worried. 

“What were you thinking, Nora?” he says. His fingers are digging into the flesh of her arms. It hurts, but she’s frozen beneath the weight of his eyes, of his anger and worry. He watches her, holds her there for what feels like an eternity and then he deflates. His broad shoulders collapse and then his metal fingers move from her arm to the small of her back. Burning her through her shirt, through the harness she picked off a dead Raider. Through her very skin. He tugs her forward, into his chest, and she goes. Because it’s Nick and because despite his anger, his hold on her is so very, very gentle. 

Nora closes her eyes and soaks in his warmth. Breathes in the oil and cigarette smoke smell of him. 

“I was worried about you,” Nick says and she nearly jumps at the sound of his voice in her ear. Folded against him, her body and his draped in his trench coat, it’s like they’re in their own world. Like they aren’t in the middle of Goodneighbor where anyone could see the two of them. 

She blushes, a hot and sudden thing that makes her pull away and crush her fingers against her palms to stop herself from reaching for him again. She smiles for him, to help lessen the sting of pulling away from him. But it’s a small thing and she can tell, by the way his face falls, that it isn’t enough. 

“I’m okay. It was...I needed to do it on my own, Nick. I have to earn Hancock’s trust,” she says. 

“And you couldn’t have told me where you were going?” Nick retorts and it bites enough that she flinches away from him. She’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, she realizes. Waiting for him to call this whole thing off and head back to Diamond City to lick his wounds. And she knows, with a frightening and startling clarity, that she won’t survive losing him either. John Hancock and Nick Valentine, her boys and her rocks no matter what life line she’s stuck in. 

“You would have stopped me,” she says, her voice too quiet. He hears and she knows when he won’t meet her eyes that she’s right. He would have stopped her and this...it was the only way she could see to get into Hancock’s good graces and keep Bobbi from doing something that she’d later regret. 

“You’re right,” Nick says, then, and it seems to surprise him as much as it does her. He smiles, the bitter note of anger fading from his voice. “Next time leave me a note, at least. Okay, Nora? We are partners after all.”

She nods and as he walks away, she finds herself echoing the words. 

“Partners.” 

They’ve never tasted quite like _this_ in her mouth before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay....just an fyi of sorts. I just started back at school yesterday and I am already swamped, since I am taking a condensed, 8-week class along with another full semester class. So very, very busy with that. And I have some drama happening at work...the long and short of it: my last day there is next Friday and I don't have another job lined up. So it's really just kind of crazy right now and I haven't really touched this story at all in the last few days between all of that. But I promise I'll get through some more of the story this weekend and I should be able to get in another update on Sunday or Monday. 
> 
> In other news, thank you guys SO MUCH for all the kudos, comments, bookmarks, etc. that you've been giving me for this story and for I Got Stamina. I'm so beyond excited that so many people are into this story too. It's going to be a very slow burn though, so strap in you guys! <3 <3


	7. Chapter 7

He’s stoned out of his fucking mind when she comes to see him a few days later. He’d let her sit and wait and wallow in whatever pile of shit she’s got heaped on her shoulders. He catches a glimpse around town, here and there. Huddled in the corner of The Third Rail next to MacCready of all fucking people, downing shots like the world’s going to end again. And shit, maybe it has, while he wasn’t looking. Chatting up Daisy at her shop while he goes to check defenses on the walls. He feels her eyes on him as he steps through the front door with Fahr close to his side. It burns, but it burns so fucking good. 

When he comes back, she’s gone. And even though he tells himself that he wasn’t expecting to meet her eyes when he walks back through the front doors, he _was_. So, he pats Fahr on the shoulder and swallows the lump in his throat and tells her he’s going to get trashed. 

“ _Alone_ , Fahr. That’s very important,” he says, when it looks like she’s about to start arguing. She closes her mouth, lips twisting into an expression he can’t figure out. 

“And if she wants to talk to you?” she says, instead. He has to give it to her. She knows how to wedge that knife in deep. 

He laughs, but it feels wrong. Broken, like the knife is lodged in his chest and he’s trying to move around it instead of just pulling it out. He waves his hand at her. It’s supposed to be nonsense, maybe even dismissive. But Fahr will know what it really is. 

He trudges up to his office and sinks down onto the worn couch. Behind him, his double doors close and he can just hear Fahrenheit telling his boys something before they snap closed. A physical block between him and the rest of the world. 

If only it were that simple. 

He leans forward, both hands on his knees and reaches for the chems. The tips of his fingers tingle and his chest aches with want. It’s always about the drugs, always about chasing that high.   
He pulls all of the stops. Jet and Mentats tempered with a little Psycho. It doesn’t take long before everything feels slow and warped, like looking through frosted glass or irradiated fog. The tips of his fingers are electrified and he keeps rubbing them against the furniture. He probably looks insane, but then he’s always been a little bit over the edge, so it’s nothing new. Still, even doped up like this, he can’t help but feel the brief crush of his lungs as she crosses his threshold. 

There’s a sharp creak and a hiss and then…

“Mayor Hancock,” she says, all careful words that make his eyes close. If he could but wrap himself in that voice. He opens his eyes again and slowly turns his head to look at her.

Behind her, one of his guards pulls the door closed behind her, leaving it cracked. Just in case. He sniffs and leans forward to grab a half-empty thing of Jet. To take the edge off. 

The silence between them stretches and folds in the space between them. He won’t look at her now, or can’t, but he can see her shift on her feet from the corner of his eyes. All he can hear is the quiet scritch of fabric against fabric and God damn him, but it draws his attention. Like a moth to a flame. Like gunpowder or gasoline or a match lit to his heart.

She’s got her hair pulled back into a braid and she’s wearing worn jeans and a threadbare button up shirt she must have found somewhere in the ‘Wealth. She’s playing with the hem of that shirt, the barest hint of tanned bare skin flashing between her fingers. He inhales, his lungs and muscles and heart hurting. And it’s then that it begins. A fever dream that almost feels like a distant, hazy memory.

_Her fingers follow every divot and cranny and nook of his body. He arches into her, her palm splayed like a brand on his chest. Over his heart. She grins, her teeth and lips and smile pressed to his neck. He wants to crawl inside of her. He wants to be a part of her the way she’s become a part of him. An extension of his arms, a testament to every hidden part of himself that he thought he’d buried and done away with a long time ago._

_She’s the best high he’s ever had. The best thing he’s ever had. He loves her. Loves her like he’s never loved anyone and he’s so fucking glad that she chose him of all the people she could have had._

_I love you, you know. She says it like a fact, like a prayer, like a promise and it hurts. Burns and cuts, flaying him open. Breaking down through his ribcage, through bone and sinew and muscles where it can lodge itself into his heart._

“Hancock?” she says, and her voice is too close. The dream-memory shatters and he doesn’t know which way is up until her fingers brush against his shoulder. He can feel the white hot burn of her touch through his frock coat, through his shirt, through his very skin. And he can’t help the groan of longing that fights its way through his throat. 

“Nora.” The garbled, strangled groan forms a word. Her name. And he feels like someone else entirely as he says it. Like a man gripped in her orbit, like the man who could kiss her and touch her as easily as breathing. 

“Hancock…,” she repeats, her words catching on his name and he wonders, belatedly, if he got a bad batch of Jet. He’s experienced bad trips before, but this isn’t that. This is...fuck, but he doesn’t know what this is. 

Nora starts to pull away, her palm and then her fingers drifting away. He reaches out, lightning-fast and snags her wrist in flight. It’s a fragile, twisting thing that he wants to bury himself in. For a single, immeasurable moment of time, he lifts his eyes to hers. He can’t fathom the expression on her face. It’s torn with longing and hope and hesitancy that he can’t understand. They don’t know each other, it isn’t possible that he could have met her and forgotten her, but he feels it anyway. Buried inside the folds of his ruined heart and tucked away like he’d hidden it from himself. This impossible instinct that he does know her, loves her. Even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Her pulse is a racing flutter beneath his fingers, in perfect synchronicity to his own. When he breathes, she breathes. It hurts until it doesn’t, until it fades to a dull roar inside of him. The drugs are wearing off and he can feel a dark sort of panic at losing whatever this is between them. He clutches her, pulls her hand forward to cradle to his chest. She stumbles, tripping over the tangle of their feet together, but she comes like she’s helpless against his pull on her. And isn’t that just a kick to the chest?

He stares up at her, meets her eyes straight on and it _burns_ how much he wants to kiss her. He lets her go as reality crashes in on him. This isn’t right. This isn’t...he won’t do this to her now. Not when his brain is addled with drugs. She falls away from him, her wrist clutched fast to her chest like she’s been burned. Her eyes are so wide, her lips trembling with things unsaid. 

“I’m-fuck, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” he says, his eyes tripping to the ground. He finds that he can’t stand to look at her wounded, hurt expression for another second. 

“Hancock, I-,” she starts. He looks up, despite every instinct not to. Her eyes are still blown wide, like she can’t quite believe what’s just happened, but her lips aren’t trembling anymore. 

“Let’s just forget it, alright?” he says, the words more biting and severe than he would have liked. The panic is still pulsing in his lungs, has seeped into his heart and up to the base of his throat. He swallows against it, breathes against it, but it’s impossible to be rid of. “I’m hopped up on drugs for miles, sister, let’s....reconvene later. Over drinks at The Third Rail, yeah?”

Maybe it’s the room. Maybe if they meet somewhere more public, where anyone could see them, just maybe he can keep himself in check. Keep whatever instincts for her he’s got brewing around inside of him in check.

She starts forward like she wants to touch him again, but she doesn’t get very far before she stops herself. A stuttering thing that he half wants to follow. He curls his fingers against the frame of the couch to anchor himself. 

“Of course,” she says. “Eight o’clock?”

“Sure. Best time for drinks,” he says. She nods and turns on her heel to leave. He hears the muffled thump of her boots against the wooden staircase and digs his fingers into the couch hard enough to make his bones ache. 

His doors open behind her and of course it’s Fahrenheit who’s there to see his shame. The look on her face is inscrutable, but her eyes are shining and her lips are twisted in the shadow of a smile. 

“You’re losing your touch, boss. She looked worse coming out than she did going in,” Fahr says, because of course she has to dig the edge of that knife in deeper. It hurts, but he finds it a little easier to breathe now that Nora is gone. 

“Yeah, you should see the other guy,” Hancock tries at a joke, but it feels flat in the space between them. Fahr leans against the far wall, her face cast in sharp relief and knowing that feels a little too close to home. 

“I’m looking at him now,” she says. Her tone is hard, but the words are soft in a way that he hasn’t seen from her in a long time. It guts him to think what he must look like if she’s softened to him like this. They’re a pair, Fahr and him, and there’s nothing gentle or tender in them. Except when there is. Except when there’s a Nora-shaped vacuum of space in his office that he won’t talk about. Can’t talk about, for how much it hurts. He doesn’t get whatever this is, but he finds that he wants to. 

He finds that he wants to know her. He wants to know that woman in his dream. He wants to know the version of himself in that dream. He just wants. It’s been so long he almost doesn’t recognize it, but it’s there. Already taking root inside his mind, inside his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GODDDDDDDD! I've been wanting to share this chapter with you guys for SO FREAKING LONG! You have no idea. Also, I am so sorry for not posting anything over the weekend. School is kicking my butt and the work stuff...well I put in my notice and my last day is tomorrow. I don't have another job lined up yet, but it's okay. It was just a really toxic work environment and despite being unemployed, I'm still happy that I'm leaving them. 
> 
> So anyways...I'm right in the middle of chapter 11, and still going strong. Thank you guys so much for your continued support. A huge shout out to: TreacherousThoughts, ~w~, and AokoYoshida for commenting on the last few chapters. You have no idea how much that means to me!! <3
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. The next one will, barring any major life-changing crisis, hopefully be out early next week.


	8. Chapter 8

Nick is running diagnostics in her room when Nora stumbles back through her doorway. She clutches at the door frame, her ears ringing with the racing of her pulse and her breath catching on the shattered remnants of tangled memories within her. She closes her eyes, willing away her nausea and grief. Willing away every instinct inside of her that tells her to turn around and go back to him. She can still feel Hancock’s burning touch wrapped around her wrist, can still smell the sweet, sticky scent of Berry Mentats on his breath, can still see the wretched fear clinging to the corners of his eyes. 

She’d done so well, staying away from him. Close enough to watch, to be watched, but just out of arm’s reach so at least they still had that between them. Touching him was like the swell of a great storm. Pushing her back, then bringing her in even closer with the tide. She is beaten and bloody and broken upon his shore now. There is no going back from this. And the way he’d looked at her when her fingers swept over his shoulder, when he grabbed her wrist. 

She sucks in a sharp breath when Nick touches her elbow. It is a gentle, tender thing that wrenches a sob from her chest. She works her throat around it, willing the burning at the back of her eyes away. She won’t cry, she won’t.

“Hey,” Nick mutters and it’s the kick that breaks the dam inside of her. For an awful, painful moment, the silence between them swells. He drags her forward and pushes the creaking door closed to give them some semblance of privacy. And it’s only then that she shatters. 

Her cries echo sharply in her ears, dragged from her despite her every effort. They stand like that for a long time. Her hand balled up in his soft, worn trench coat as he presses her to his chest. His hands tangled in her hair, rubbing soothing circles in her back, his lips a whisper away from her temple. He holds her through the worst of it, those bone-deep sobs wracking through her like poison drawn from a wound. 

Even when she finally quiets, he holds her. When the sobs soften to trembles in her shoulders and drying tears on her cheeks, when she lifts her chin to look up into his strange, handsome, _wonderful_ face. When thank you dies on her lips because it isn’t enough, will never be enough. 

And it’s then that she realizes the awful, ugly, twisting truth that she’s tried for so long to push into that locked box in her mind. The one labeled “do not touch.” The one that she doesn’t touch, until she does. Until she rips it to shreds with both hands.

Until she comes to the conclusion that there can be no other explanation for the sudden swelling of her heart and the catch of her breath when Nick’s dark yellow eyes meet her own. Her hand tightens in his shirt and then she slowly, carefully pulls away with a small smile. 

“Sorry about that. It’s been a long day,” she says by way of explanation, gathering yet another secret tight to her chest. She can feel the burning tips of both of her ears and the heat flooding her cheeks. But either Nick doesn’t see it or chooses not to comment on it. Either way, she is grateful. She is.

“Well, the day is still young. We could go over to The Third Rail and get drunk,” Nick says, a teasing smile playing around the corners of his mouth. She allows herself a second to look, a second to want, and then she forces her gaze away. To a point above his shoulder. A safe, neutral place to look. 

“You can’t get drunk, Nick,” she says and gets a low, hearty chuckle for her trouble. Her stomach clenches and she forces herself to breathe. Just breathe and wonder if the universe is trying to drive her up a wall. 

“I can’t? Well, shit, doll, where were you 100 years ago when I first started trying? Woulda saved the ‘Wealth a Hell of a lot of alcohol,” Nick banters. There’s a moment. Where the silence fills the room and she feels brave enough to look at him. The expression is all wrong on him. Like he’s fallen into something he doesn’t quite know how to dig himself out of. It’s then that she realizes what he said and she could have laughed with happiness or relief or anything because it doesn’t hurt so much to think about what she was doing 100 years ago, or even a year and a half ago. 

Somewhere between Hancock and Nick and the Minutemen settlements and saving the world, that Nate-and-Shaun shaped hole inside of her heart has started to fill again. Jagged at the edges and branded inside of her, she knows it’ll never completely heal, but it’s so much less now and as sad as it makes her, she’s also immeasurably happy.

So she reaches for his hand and squeezes. His mouth shifts into something a little less wounded and scared. 

“I was right here the whole time,” she says, soft and gentle. “Just a little less responsive than you’d expect.” 

“Well, you’re here now and that’s all that matters,” Nick says. A sharp pain lances through her heart with his words and it sort of makes her want to cry again. She smiles, all trembling lips and gleaming teeth. She wants to step back into the circle of his arms. She wants to soak in the gunmetal and oil smell of him. She wants. But she doesn’t trust herself enough not to want more. Not to push whatever this bright thing trapped inside of her chest is. 

There’s still Hancock, which sends a fresh wave of dread and guilt through her because they’re not together, but she’s loved him this long hasn’t she? She’ll go on loving him even if he decides that she isn’t what he wants, what he needs. And there’s the Institute and any number of other things to worry about, but for now, it’s enough to know that Nick is here. That she’s here. That they’re all safe. Or at least as safe as any one person can be in the new Commonwealth. 

She squeezes Nick’s hand one last time and then lets go. Doesn’t miss the flash of something like regret over his face. Doesn’t miss the echo of it inside of her. 

“I have to meet Hancock tonight. I stopped by his office just now, but, well….” She waves her hand over herself and he nods with understanding. 

“You need backup?” Nick says, his voice careful in a way that ties her in knots. 

“No,” she says. If there’s anything she’s sure about it, it’s that. Hancock wouldn’t hurt her. At least, not intentionally. Every second being near him is torture, but that’s on her. “No, I’ll be fine.”

“Well, you don’t look fine now,” Nick says and there’s an angry bite to the words that she can’t quite grasp. The tension in the air, emanating from the sudden, dark set of his shoulders and the furrow between his brows, is enough to make her want to step back. She doesn’t. Just stands there because apparently she’s a glutton for punishment, for the taste of bitter ash in her mouth and shaking hands and anger thick enough to cut with the blunt edge of a knife. 

Nick reaches for her then, his metal fingers skimming over her shoulder but never quite touching. Never pausing for comfort or reassurance or whatever he’s aiming to give. Maybe that’s just the problem. But, against all odds, she gets it. Gets that he wants to be close, but can’t. She’s had a little over a year to get used to the idea of taking comfort in others again. 

And that Nick’s had a century and _still_ hasn’t is enough to break her heart. So she watches him flounder, watches his dark eyes flash and flutter with some expression she can’t decipher. _He’s beautiful_ , she thinks as she catches his hand between two of her own, _just like this_. His face transforms. Softens into something close to rapture or wonder as he steps into her. 

She closes her eyes, her pulse in her throat and her heart on her sleeve. Bared mind, body, and soul for him. But it’s not into he’s stepping, it’s past. She feels the hem of his coat against her calves, hears the whisper of whirring processors as he moves away from her. 

“Just be careful. That’s all I ask, Nora,” he says and in the next breath, he’s gone with the creak of the door in its frame. 

She sinks down onto the stained mattress pushed into the corner of the room. Still feels the heat of him sunk down into fabric and feathers and springs. Her fingers ball up into the mattress. She clings to the wire frame and wonders when it might end. She is no saint, she knows that without a doubt. But doesn’t she deserve a little happiness, a little reprieve from the blood and shit and salt that’s ingrained in this new world of theirs? Hasn’t she earned at least that?

She tries to breathe past the weight of rejection and hurt and loneliness. She can’t, but she tries. She stays there. For how long, she has no idea. There are no tears, but she can feel the threat of them pressed to the backs of her eyes and the stinging in her nose. In the ache at the back of her throat. 

And then, she realizes something. She’s had a lifetime of feeling sorry for herself. If this really is her last rodeo, then fuck if she’s going to sit here in a puddle of her own tears. It still hurts, it’s still branded into her very soul that she’s in love with Nick Valentine. That she’s in love with John Hancock, mayor of Goodneighbor and all-around lovable fiend. That she’s spent a dozen lifetimes with them that they can’t remember. 

Oh, does it hurt. But that’s life, she concludes as she gathers herself onto her feet and marches with intent to The Third Rail. And what is there in life that can’t be solved with a little alcohol and a pretty, crooning voice?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO MANY THINGS ARE HAPPENING!!! 
> 
> So just a few things...school is going well. My job search, not so much, and I've had a really bad case of writer's block since last week. It's really, really awful, but hopefully it'll end soon. I did figure it had been a long while between updates, so here is the new chapter! A little less dramatic than the last one, but just as important I think. 
> 
> Let me know your thoughts! And thank you again for being so unbelievably supportive of me and this fic. I don't deserve you guys!! <3


	9. Run Me Through

He all but rushes out of The Memory Den, ghosts chasing his coat tails and Irma’s smooth laugh ringing in his ears. The door swings shut behind him and it’s all he can do to get clear of the door before he folds himself into shadow. A phantom lingering, waiting. 

He flexes his metal fingers, the wiring beneath stretched taught as he remembers the hot crush of his hand between her own. It’s still branded into his frame, that touch. A searing press of _something_ that he doesn’t have a name for. It feels too big, too bright, trapped and fluttering in his chest. Somewhere close to where his heart ought to be. If he had a heart. If he was human. 

As it is, he tries to push it off. Tries to shove it down deep, as deep as it can go. There is no safe harbor, chasing thoughts like that. Especially now, especially in this place.   
“Cap for your thoughts, Nicky?” 

To his credit, he doesn’t jump so much as twitch. His synthetic, plastic-wrapped hand flashing in the dark to his hip and the pistol strapped there beneath his coat. And his golden eyes turning in the shadows, watching for a break in the dark.

“Never knew you to be so quick to start a firefight,” the voice says again, and this time, he knows it. Knows that fire and whiskey tone like he knows his own. Knows the white-hot press of irradiated fingers to his wrist. And God damn him, but he knows that kick to his processors too. The faint but present sound of his servos ratcheting up into overdrive. Still, he tries to play it off. Tries to push that deep down inside too, but it doesn’t quite work if John’s quiet laugh is anything to go by. 

“It’s been years, John, so don’t try to tell _me_ what you know,” he says. It’s too sharp, too biting, to be anything but an insult. He half expects the touch at his wrist to vanish, for the ghoul that’s caused him nothing but trouble to slink away in the darkness as quickly as he’d come. But the touch doesn’t vanish, just plays hot and branding where the pulse would race beneath his skin. If he had a pulse. If he was human. 

“So what’s got you all hot and bothered, Valentine?” Hancock says. His eyes are used to the shadows now and he catches the flash of teeth from his companion at that. For a single, impossible moment Nick wants to say you. But that gets stuck in his throat. Lodged somewhere next to all those old memories of the real Nick Valentine. Next to all the moments he wants to reach out and take and didn’t. Because the truth of it is, that he is a coward. Is, was, and probably always would be.

“Nothing to worry yourself with, John,” he says instead and it tastes like bitter disappointment rolling off his tongue. At least it gets the good mayor to pull away. Enough for Nick to catch the flash of anger and hurt in the other man’s eyes. Enough for that unsaid word to waste away inside him. 

Beside him, John clears his throat and sweeps his arm wide as he begins to turn away. He holds back the instinct to grab him, to hold fast to this man that he should have held a long time ago. A lifetime ago, and never did. The moment lingers, thrashes between them in an endless and cloying sense of inevitability. This time, it's John who turns back. John who turns his back on the world for him and he's not sure what to do about that. He's not sure what to do about that unnatural shine to John's eyes either. It's cutting and dangerous and utterly magnetic all at once.

“Listen, Nick, it’s been a weird fucking day, right? Can we just…can we pretend for one night that we don’t have all this shit between us? I’ve got enough of that going on with your girl at the moment and to be frank, I don’t need it from you too,” he says and it’s almost funny just how right he is. Which brings on a fresh new wave of guilt and horror. Because it isn’t just John that gets his coolant pumping. It isn’t just John that makes him feel too big for his skin. It’s her too. 

Nora. That impossible, beautiful woman that saved him. That kept on saving him long after they’d left the hallowed halls of Vault 114 behind them. She was a friend, the best friend he had in this new world of theirs, but she wasn’t _his_ by any stretch of his imagination.

Nick remembers the first time she’d said John’s name. Like a prayer. Like a promise. Like a secret that only she had the privilege of knowing. It broke his heart to hear it. To hear that naked and raw desperation in her voice. To love someone who couldn’t love you back, who wouldn’t love you back. 

Well, he knew something about that, didn’t he? He knew, but he wouldn’t be the one to add to the growing list of burdens she had piling up on her shoulders. Whether it was with her or with John, he wouldn’t step in their way.

So, despite everything inside of him screaming and tearing and ripping against the truth, he held out his hand to the man that was so many of his almosts. Almost friend. Almost love. Almost, almost, almost.

“You have my word, John,” Nick said. And if his fingers linger a little too long, well who is there to ring the truth from him? 

It’s only then that Hancock turns his back and swaggers out of the dark. The tails of his red coat swinging and his ruined lips curling around a winning smile. He’s beautiful as anything in the Wasteland can be. All mottled skin and a dangerous shine to his eyes and that God damned smile to run him through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....still no job and still drowning in school stuff. And to top it all off, my muse completely quit on me and I'm only now digging myself out of the rut I got stuck in over these last few weeks. I was up to chapter 12 with this fic, now I'm back down to chapter 10, which really sucks because I was hoping to keep the updates more regular, but I'm fighting through it so nothing to worry about as of yet. I will admit to being ready to give the whole thing up, but I'm not about to do that lol. 
> 
> Thanks for all the wonderful support in the form of comments and kudos and bookmarks. You guys have been beyond encouraging and I really, really love each of you for it. So let me know what you think and wish me luck in finding another job soon. <3 <3


	10. Chapter 10

She’s holed up in the back room where MacCready’s set up shop. A little alcohol had turned into a lot and it’s all she can do to prevent herself from seeing double when Mac pushes another glass towards her. She reaches out and his fingers twist from the glass. Always so careful not to touch her. 

“So, you really said to some merc working for the Institute? How fu-freaking crazy are you?” 

“You didn’t get that the first time you met me?” she says, and can’t hold back the laughter this time. “I gave you 250 caps just to sit in here and keep taking jobs until I needed you.” 

“That’s true. Shit-I mean, shoot, I guess you really are nuts,” MacCready says and it’s almost funny the way that he pauses to collect himself whenever he swears, or nearly does. But then she remembers Duncan. That little boy across the Wasteland and this broken-at-the-edges man sitting next to her. A family divided by circumstance. In her first lifetime, he’d confided in her about his life before in the Capitol Wasteland and Lucy and his sick son that he missed and loved more than anything in the world. But she’d been so God damned set on finding Shaun that she hadn’t…she’d pushed it off. She swore to him that she’d handle it after blowing the Institute to Hell, but she hadn’t gotten that chance. 

She’d been so fucking selfish. And for what? To find that her son wasn’t a baby or even a slightly older little boy. He was an old man, a tyrant. A monster unrepentant. She should have known. Nothing about this world had been forgiving from the moment she woke up from cryo. No one could escape the devastation of the apocalypse and she’d thought, what? That somehow, she would be the exception? God, she was so fucking naïve. 

“Hey, boss, you okay?” MacCready’s voice is a pleasant, if jarring distraction from her own thoughts. She reels back, her hands sliding away from her glass as she goes. She finds that she can’t quite look at him, yet, but she manages a weak smile. It’s something anyway.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice hoarse and her eyes downcast. She pauses, works her throat around the lump that’s settled there. “I’m good. Just thinking.” 

“Nothing good ever came from that,” he says on a laugh. 

“Shut up,” she says. He flicks her off and she grins. 

His blue eyes dart away, towards the open doorway and the din of noise just outside. The smile fades, replaced by something serious and dark. His blue eyes harden, turned brittle as glass. When she turns, she sees why. 

Winlock and Barnes, the Gunners she’d had the misfortune to meet in her lifetime, are lurking in the doorway. Their eyes alight with interest and their mouths twisted in two matching, lecherous grins. 

“So, you’ve resorted to paying for female company? That’s a new level of low, even for you, MacCready,” Barnes says, his stained teeth flashing in the low light. 

“She’s not even that decent looking. With the amount of caps you’re pulling out from under us, you should be able to afford better, _Bobby_ ,” Winlock says. He sneers the nickname and beside her, she can feel MacCready tensing up. She wants to reach for him, wants to keep him from doing anything he might regret. She doesn’t, of course. He’d never forgive her for showing weakness in front of these idiots. 

So, she swallows her pride and every echoing insecurity from her housewife days and stands. 

“How about I go get us a fresh round?” she says and lets the laser rifle she’s got strapped to her back and the .44 at her hip speak for themselves. Let’s her custom-built armor speak for itself. Let’s them see the burnished flames in her eyes and the clever, knowing smile on her mouth. 

Winlock, blessed with at least some sense of self-preservation, steps to the side for her. Barnes just lingers in the doorway. His broad shoulders square up and he just smiles at her. A feral grin touched with rotting teeth and his own brand of nasty. Her skin is crawling with the need to get away from him, but she just stands her ground. 

“You mind getting the fuck out of my way?” she asks, voice calm like she’s asking about the weather. It just makes him grin even more. 

“Feisty, this one,” he says. She can see his hand moving and she knows what’s coming. She knows. “That why you keep her around, MacCready?”

She knows and at the last moment, she pivots on her heel and throws a punch that catches Winlock in the throat. He doubles over, his eyes watering, and his hands scrabbling at his neck. When she turns, Barnes is looking at her like _she’s_ the feral one. 

“The fuck, lady? Are you fucking crazy?!” he demands. She chuckles, low and menacing as she can make it. 

“Yeah I am. Now if you know what’s good for you, you’ll move,” she says. He does, immediately. She throws one last look at Mac over his shoulder. He’s grinning like a kid on Christmas. She smiles back and then leaves the room. Her hand’s going to be hurting something fierce in the morning, but she doesn’t regret it. Their reaction had been enough to make the pain worth it. 

Nora makes her way through the room, past couples swinging along to Magnolia’s crooning voice and loud, incessant bickering, and the loners at the bar swinging back shots of whiskey and vodka. She settles into the stool right in front of Whitechapel Charlie. His eye stalks take her in and he gives a rumble of laughter. 

“What’ll it be?”

“You have any ice back there?” she asks, only half-joking. She could always take a Stimpak for the pain, but she’d rather not waste them like that. She’d all but emptied out Daisy’s stock already.  
“I’ve got some of the Ice Cold Gwinnett from Buddy over at the Rexford,” Charlie tells her. She grins, thinking of that old bot. 

“Give me two of those,” she says, remembering that Hancock will probably arrive soon. 

“You meetin’ the Mayor?” Charlie asks as he grabs the beer from under the bar. She doesn’t even want to know how he could have guessed that, but she takes the bait anyway. 

“How did you guess?” she says, grabbing for one of the beers and resting the bottle on her already bruising knuckles. 

“You get this look on your face when you talk about him,” he says, and laughs at her suddenly burning cheeks. “You do that, too.” She tries not to think about what happened between them earlier, whatever that was. She can still feel the burn of his fingers gripped fast on her hand and the race of her pulse just under her skin. And that buzzing in her ears as he leaned in, like he’d kiss her, like he’d swallow her up whole. She tries not to think on it, she really does, but it’s impossible when a shoulder against her own and when she turns, it’s his eyes she meets. His smile that makes her heart stop. 

“Evening, sunshine,” he says. He’s too close and not close enough and she really shouldn’t have downed that last drink. 

“Hi,” she says, articulate as ever. The corner of his mouth crooks upward and God, but she loves him. And she’s sure it’s written all over her face. She shifts her eyes up to Charlie and rights her bar on the counter. She nods at him and he removes the caps off their beers. 

“You’re gonna need that,” he says, ever helpful, as he glides down to the other end of the bar. She reaches for her drink and takes a healthy swig out of it to quiet her nerves. She closes her eyes as she swallows and lets the alcohol and Magnolia’s voice wash through her. When she opens her eyes again, she feels a little less frazzled and she finds that it’s not as hard to turn on her stool and face him. 

“So, you called this meeting,” she says and he nods, his eyes flashing in the low light. He grins, a quick thing that flashes teeth and tongue. 

“Yeah. The thing with Bobbi, it could have gotten real ugly, real fast. But that shit you pulled saved her life and saved my stash, so I figure I owe you. Doc Amari says she’s gonna be fine, but her hand is shot to hell. She probably won’t be able to shoot a gun again,” he says, regarding her curiously. It burns through her, that look. She’d almost forgotten how intense he could be, how focused he could make himself. Her cheeks fill with heat again and hopes that the lack of good light in here covers up most of it.

“I didn’t do it for you,” she says. She thinks, maybe, by the flash of anger across his face, that it was the wrong thing to say. Until he smiles, a sad, nearly desperate tug of his lips and she realizes. The anger isn’t for her, but all for himself. 

“I know that. I know,” he says, that smile fading and the hollow echo in his eyes hunted. “This classy little tricorner hat of mine is getting heavy, if you know what I mean,” Hancock says.

“Hancock, you don’t-,” she starts, but he stops her with a hand. It’s so much like the first time they’d had this conversation, but so different too. 

“Let me finish, please,” he says, his face twisted in a grimace that she wants to chase away. He pauses a moment, seems to gather his thoughts, and then trudges forward. She can see how much this is eating him and she feels that swell of guilt inside of her again. “I spend all my time putting down the people I would’ve been proud to scheme with just a few years ago. I’ve gotten comfortable, and no one in power should stay comfortable for long. Especially me. 

“I need to take a walk again. Get a grip on what really matters: living free. If you’ll have me, then I’d like to offer my services. I’m a good shot and I’m basically a walking chem dealer if you need a hit. So what d’ya say?” 

He watches her and she can see the hesitancy in him. He’s so unsure of himself, of how she’ll react to taking him on. And it’s almost funny, except it really isn’t, and she can feel the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She blinks them away and reaches for him. She holds his scarred hand in her own and it’s only when he squeezes back that she answers him. 

“You’re more than just a good shot, Hancock,” she says and his mouth turns up on one side at that. “Of course I want you with me.” He smiles and it’s so blinding that she should look away. But how can she? How could she look away from that?

“I’ll make the announcement in the morning. Make sure Fahr is set up, and then we can go,” he says. She smiles and thinks about letting her hand fall away again, not wanting to push the boundaries any more than she already had. But he just squeezes her hand and smiles, soft at the edges and so tender she has to look away now. 

It’s not perfect, _they’re_ not perfect, but it’s a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So things are sort of looking up...I got a job. Albeit, it's an adjustment going from my last job, which was a full-time gig, to this part-time job, but it's something at least right? And school is going a little bit better, though I have a lot to do next week, so we'll see if I can squeeze in another chapter before next weekend. My muse is cooperating a little bit better and I was able to write this chapter between last night and this morning so yay!
> 
> This chapter is so vastly different from the one that I was going to post and that was where most of my issues with this story were. Basically, things between Hancock and Nora were moving way too fast, and I think what I ended up with was a lot better in terms of the slow burn story I'm going for. So, hopefully you guys enjoy. Please drop me a line if you have the time! You guys have been so, so great and so patient with all of my personal issues. I really love each and every one of you for it, so thank you! <3


	11. Chapter 11

She is stuck. Trapped within dreams and nightmares and eviscerated memory. Everything is shattered glass and blood and freezing, burning cold. There’s Nate with his smiling face and the beautiful, tangled mop of his hair. Falling in his eyes and brushing against her cheeks when he leans in for a kiss. But it’s all wrong. Blood is leaking, black and viscous as oil, between his teeth and over his chin. She reaches out and when she does, he falls. His body blown by the impact of a .44 bullet and a voice carved from hardened metal and fire. 

“At least we still have the backup…” 

And when he peers up at her, it isn’t Kellogg’s face, but her own. Frayed and torn at the edges with dust in her hair and dirt caked on her cheek. She looks ravaged, broken. Like a monster wrapped in chains.

She flies upward, her back electrified and arching in pain. She clutches at her clothing. The blunt edges of her nails digging into her thighs, into her palms, into any bare patch of skin she can find. She knows it was a dream, she _knows_. But it felt so real, too real. 

She’s shaking so bad, all nerves-on-fire, that she almost misses the shuddering of the walls around her and the fall of dust from the ceiling. That’s when she hears it. 

The thing about Goodneighbor, for better or worse, is that the walls are thin as paper. You can hear everything. And this, the screams and the gunfire and the hysterical laughter, is enough to jolt her out of her bed. She stumbles to the door, her legs still shaking but steady beneath the weight of her. She has enough sense to tug a ragged jacket around her shoulders and grab a gun before she races out into the hallway. The lights are flickering, wires and connections knocked loose.

She runs into Nick as he’s rounding the corner and the look in his eyes is anything but comforting. 

“Christ, Nick, what’s going on?” she asks and ignores the waiver in her voice. The walls shudder again and this time, she hears what can only be a frag mine going off. It’s muted, but there. Her heart is in her throat as Nick’s hand finds her own. She grips him hard and for a moment, it feels like he’s the only thing holding her to the Earth. 

And before she knows it, she’s off. _They’re_ off. Her tugging him behind her and his coattails flapping in their rush from The Memory Den. There’s a rage so deep in her veins that it feels like she’s lit asunder. 

Whatever this is, whoever this is, it’ll be the last time they fuck with Goodneighbor. 

They clear the doors and she nearly falls back into Nick when she hits the wall of heat. She coughs, her lungs seizing in the sudden deluge of smoke and ash in the air. 

“Shit,” she mutters. Her eyes start to water and she lifts her arm to her mouth on instinct, blocking out the worst of the pollution flooding her lungs. The streets are clogged with people. Some clutching blossoming red at their abdomens. Some clutching the bodies of their fallen to their chests. But all of them moving away from the entrance to Goodneighbor. 

She closes her heart to the hurt, closes her mind to the grief and moves. Moves towards the fire, towards the fight. Past bodies singed to black skin and hollowed eye sockets. Past brothers and sisters in arms with tears chasing tracks down their faces. 

And that’s when she sees him.

Hancock’s coat fluttering in the wind with his arms held aloft, shotgun pointed at the enemy beyond his doors. Her breath seizes in her chest again and this time, it isn’t something she can close herself off from. She can’t run from this, can’t remain detached when it comes to him. She feels Nick step up beside her, feels the hot press of his fingers and the stiff line of his torso against her arm. 

“God dammit, John!” Nick says and it’s not her leading him anymore. It’s the two of them moving forward together. Unstoppable forces barreling towards the same wonderfully stupid and headstrong man. 

Just as they get level with him, a single shot rings through the air. She jolts forward, they both do, but it’s not enough. Hancock falls, blown back by the force into the wall at his back. She hears the sharp intake of Nick’s breath and watches as he charges past her. Watches as he falls to his knees and his hands move forward, checking Hancock for wounds. Even over all the noise, over the chaos, she can hear his servos clicking and whirring. Definite signs that he’s overheating, that something is wrong. 

And oh. Oh! 

She turns on her heel, filing it away and focusing on the here and now. On the ugly piece of shit ghoul staring at her from just outside of Goodneighbor with a small army at his back. Some humans, some ghouls, and all of them gunning for her blood. She lifts her arm and aims for his head. 

“And there they are. The Cavalry,” he says. His voice is like molten brass. She’d rip it from his throat if she could, she’d tear the breath from his body if she could.

“Who the Hell let you out?” she says, grinds her teeth on the words hard enough to make her jaw ache. It’s like chewing on glass. He smiles, grins like he’s the cat who got the mouse. And maybe he has. Maybe he’s got her exactly where he wants her. He takes a step forward and her fingers tighten around her .44. She knows that look. She knows that feral grin and that shock of gray hair. His clothes are different and it’s fucking impossible for him to be here, and yet here they are. 

Eddie Winter in the flesh and of all the people to remember her, she never imagined it could be him. Never in a million fever dreams did she believe it could be him. 

“It’s a shock, ain’t it?” Eddie says, taking another step forward. Behind her, Hancock coughs and she can feel the relief in Nick’s voice. 

“You gotta stop being a hero, John. This old bot can’t take it,” Nick says. She’d smile if her heart wasn’t in her throat, if one of the Old World’s worst sort of criminal wasn’t standing in front of her with the nastiest smile on his lips. Nick is safe from this ugly truth, for now, and she’d keep it that way forever if she could. 

But wishing didn’t make it so.

“I have ta admit, I had you pegged from the moment you waltzed through my front door. That blonde hair like spun fucking gold and those eyes,” he says and motions to her with both arms. She sees the flash of silver in his hand and wonders which one of them he’s going to try to stab in the back. 

Her or Nick. 

He’s close enough now to take a swipe at her. He’s close enough now that Nick’s got wise to his presence. She can feel his hands still on Hancock, can hear the creak of his metal knees as he pivots, can feel the draw of his gaze on her back slide to the right and take in the man he’d sworn to end once and for all a dozen lifetimes ago.

But then that’s the thing. Time didn’t restart for just the good guys. It restarted for the bad as well. For Eddie Winter. For Pickman. For her God damned monster of a son. All of them were still lurking in the Commonwealth, waiting for her. Only Eddie knew her. Knew the feeling of her bullets in his chest and knew the sharp edge of her smile. 

“Those eyes are what got me. You’re pre-war, I know that now. With that hair and those eyes and that soft body of yours, you couldn’t be anything but,” he says. He takes one more step. Walks right up to her and she watches him look past her shoulder. Watches him take in Hancock and Nick huddled together. She doesn’t like the look on his face. It’s subtle, the shift. But the bow of his lips tugs up and the corners stretch and his eyes flash. Two burnished embers set in his ruined face. He holds up his knife, the blade cradled in his deft grip. Waves it around so they can get a good long look at it. 

“You sick fuck. What gives?” Hancock shouts and she can almost imagine the look on his face. Can almost feel his terror for her. She flexes her fingers on her .44. Wonders just how fucking crazy she’d have to be to take him out right here, right now.

Eddie hums and lets his arm fall to his side and then turns the full force of his gaze on her again. His eyes are shot with red, his irises covered in a milky, pale blue film. But they’re no less menacing than the day she and Nick stormed his fallout shelter. He’s no less menacing, but still she feels the sharp bite of dissidence within her. She killed him once. She could do it again. 

He considers her for a moment and then leans in close. His breath is hot on the side of her face. He dares to let his fingers touch the back of her hand. 

“You shoot me and you all die, _Nora_ ,” he whispers. It feels like a promise and it ruins the seed of her plan before it’s truly begun. He chuckles when her shoulders shift and fall. “That’s right.” 

His fingers slide away from her bare skin up her arm and he grabs her shoulders. It’s just this side of painful and she can feel the blunt edges of his fingernails digging into her. 

“That’s right,” he says and that feels like a promise too. Even as he moves away. Even as he disappears through his throng of followers like a phantom. Even as the echo of his laughter lingers long after he’s slipped away and his words painted like poison into her skin. Branded there with the threat of his return. 

_I look forward to seeing you again, Nora._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.....this little plot nugget has been brewing in my mind for such a ridiculously long time. I'm so excited to finally have it on paper and I hope you guys enjoy. It's the first real action we've had in this story, so I'm ready to hear what you think of it! Eddie Winter is one of those characters that I kind of wished had had more on screen time. Like you get all of the nasty stuff he did from Nick's memories and from the tapes you have to find, but like idk...greatest criminal kingpin of old world Boston, I have a hard time believing he'd just sit and wait in a fallout shelter for somebody to come and find him for 200 flipping years. So this is my way of reconciling my ideas about him...and also using him shamelessly to create conflict in my fic lol. 
> 
> Let me know what you guys think!! You're all the best! And Happy late Valentine's Day! <3 <3


	12. Chapter 12

She keeps standing there. Like she’s stuck, frozen in time. Like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop or like she’s too afraid to turn her back now that she knows what’s out there lingering in the dark. It pulls at him, pulls at that part of him that knows her even if he doesn’t quite know how. 

Hancock thinks of that asshole’s hands on her, thinks of that smug fucking smile on his face over her shoulder, thinks of plunging his knife so deep inside that there’s no way but out. And it burns him up. Strikes a rage so tight and clear and hot that it’s all he can do not to jump to his feet and run after him. The nerve of him. Coming into his domain and blowing holes in his town, in him. 

Speakin’ of which…

“Shit, Nicky, ease up on the prodding,” he hisses through clenched teeth when the tip of Nick’s finger digs in a little too hard. 

“My mistake,” Nick says. His eyes are bright and crinkled at the corners and Hancock can see why. Can guess why, because that’s all he can do is guess. This is the closest they’ve been in five years. Nick’s hands splayed wide over his midriff and the whole of his lean frame hovering over him. Like he can shield him from whatever else might try to take him out. Something hot and sharp springs to life in his chest. Carved from light and want and a hope so fucking bright that it has its very own category of hurt. Because here is his past and standing there is his future and it's all a little too much. So, he runs. Runs from the want, runs from the hope, right into the deepest and darkest part of himself.

“Not to be that guy, but who the fuck was that? I gotta know what name to carve into my bullets when I take him out,” he says. And for all that it hurts to see Nick’s eyes shutter closed, it gets Nora to move and that’s something, right?

He watches her drift closer. One step two steps three steps now. Her hands clutched tightly together and her eyes hollowed out. She looks like she’s seen a ghost, like she’s being haunted. Shit, for all he knows, she might be. It certainly looked personal the way that old ghoul had touched her, had smiled at him and Nick over her shoulder. Like she was his prey and he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into her. 

She steps right up to his side and kneels beside him in the dirt. 

“We’ll explain everything, but not here,” she says and it’s stupid how much it hurts that she won’t look at him. 

“Ballistic weave in your coat caught most of the damage. You should be okay with some Med-X. Maybe even a Stimpak if you’re good,” Nick says, a chuckle in his voice and the lines at the corners of his eyes back. Hancock opens his mouth, the quip on the tip of his tongue before he can really think about it. 

“C’mon, Nick, you know he doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.” They’re his words, twisted, falling out of her mouth. The knowing settles. And the smile she gives him, carved from bright light and ragged edges? That settles too. Right in the cavernous hole of his lion’s heart.

***

Between the two of them, they manage the climb up to his rooms in the State House. It’s weird, how empty it is. He’d directed Fahr and the guards posted inside to go and fortify the main entrance as best they could and restore some kind of order to his town again. He felt useless. Worse than useless, if he was honest. 

And it's little comfort that even if he wasn’t shot to shit, there isn't much he could do anyway. 

“I fucking hate this,” he seethes as Nora settles in front of him with makeshift bandages from torn up bed sheets and a syringe of Med-X clutched like a cigarette between her fingers. 

“We all hate this. Stop your belly-aching,” Nick says. He’s leaning up against the only window in the room that isn’t boarded up. The dark orange glow of dying fires halos his head. He tries very hard not to think about the imagery there and focuses instead on the needle sliding home in his arm and on Nora’s hands on him. It’s different than with Nick. Her hands are hot, nearly scalding, on his skin. And she’s turned so close into him that he can feel her breath on him. He tries very hard not to think about that either. 

“So, who was that asshole?” he says, the words thick and hot in his mouth. He’d forgotten how fast Med-X works. Still, he feels the shift in the air. It’s cloying now. Too close. Like the oxygen’s been sucked out of the room. Like there’s no space. 

“Eddie Winter,” Nora says, her voice near a whisper. He opens his eyes, catches her gaze and can almost taste the viscous iron of her fear in his mouth. 

“Back in Old Boston. Before the war,” Nick clarifies, “Eddie Winter was the most feared crime-boss in the state. He had his hands in everything. Drugs, weapons, manipulation of stocks, human trafficking…he did it all.

“And he killed without regard. Mowed down kids, women, the elderly. He killed my- _Nick’s_ -fiancée, Jennifer Lands.”

The words hang over them all and oh, he can’t ignore the bitter hatred filling all the spaces between them. In the feet between Nick’s barely-shaking hands. In the inches between Nora’s hovering fingertips. All of it set in a blazing, intricate web that weaves among them. Tying him to her and her to Nick and Nick to him. As much as he would like to deny it, because it scares the shit out of him….

He can’t and that’s the scariest truth of all. He can’t run from his instinct to pull Nick close. To tell him that he might have the other Nick’s memories, but every person he’s saved since the Institute dumped him and every good thing he’s done in this world is _his_. He matters, even if he can’t see it himself. He can’t run from her, either. 

Nora with her jagged smile and knowing eyes. Nora with the same expression carved into her face that he feels in his heart. God, but whatever bug he has, she’s got it too. She turns her eyes away, continues her work on his wounds, but that look is burned inside of him. 

“And we killed him before. We can damn sure do it again,” she says and it sends something wicked-sharp lancing through his stomach. 

_Before. Again._

It feels dangerously close to the truth of her and even though it sounds crazy, impossible even, it also sounds right. So, in a breath, he’s forcing the words across his tongue. Because he needs to know, damnit. He deserves to know.

“The hell do you mean you killed him before?” he says. Waits. Nora’s hands are still on him. One hand trapped around a bloodied swath of cloth pressed against his wounds. The other fallen to his knee to support her weight. He shouldn’t look at her, but he does it anyway. And he feels the tug of his heart strings as he finds that look of regret and love and sorrow in her eyes. 

This time, he’s ready for it. He’s ready for the burrowing of lost memories out of his eyes, out of his hands, out of his heart. He thinks he’s ready. 

_They’re cheering. Of course, they are. This is the end, after all, and they’ve made it out the other side. But all those people, Nora’s son, the synths they couldn’t find in time, they didn’t. And he knows Nora will blame herself. He watches the smoke and ash and fire billow out over the city from CIT and feels something cold and hard like flint catch inside of him._

_He steps in front of her. Like he could possibly shield her from this, from her own guilt._

_“Hey,” he says, because it’s the only thing to come to mind. Her eyes fly open and there’s so many questions trapped in her gaze. So many emotions running in the lines of her face, lit up by the flames._

_Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that she wants anything to do with him. Sometimes, she’s so beautiful that it hurts. Sometimes, her smile is close enough to cut glass that he can feel himself falling and catching on the ragged edges of it. But if loving her is signing his own death warrant, he’d sign it a million times over._

_He leans in and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear. Takes her hands and squeezes. For reassurance, for comfort, he doesn’t know. She’s shaking like a leaf and he’d do anything to stop it. He leans in and brushes her lips in a whisper of a kiss. It still chases electric down his spine when she presses closer. Her hands go to his shoulders and she steps into him, their boots knocking together._

_“Hey yourself,” she says when she pulls back for air. There’s a lightness to her face and eyes that wasn’t there a moment ago. It makes something too-bright and too-warm curl up in his hollow heart. God, but he loves her. Loves her so much it hurts._

_She leans in again and now she’s pressed right up against the front of him. Lingers on his ruined lips and then…._

_Nothing._

_When he opens his eyes again, he’s in Goodneighbor and before he has even a second to wonder what the fuck happened, Fahr walks in and starts going off about Finn and Bobbi No-Nose and some synth they just had to shoot in the street._

_“Sounds like the Minutemen are back in business, too. Cleared out that settlement, Hangman’s Alley, near Diamond City…”_

_Her voice fades away. His hands are shaking and his head is pounding. He remembers taking the Alley months ago with Nora. He remembers that. He remembers taking her hand and taking her up to the only beds in the place. He remembers her fucking him down into the mattress and laying in a tangled, sweaty heap after._

_He remembers that. Couldn’t have possibly made that up._

_“Boss, you listening to me?” Fahr says and it’s only when he turns to look at her that he realizes how tripped out he must seem to her. His hands are still shaking, so he tucks them inside his pockets._

_“Yeah, sorry, just huffed some bad Jet, I think,” he says, his voice half a laugh and steadier than it has any right to be. Whatever’s happening, if he could just make his way to Nora, it would sort itself out._

_“Might be worth a little recon to head over there and introduce myself.”  
Fahr nods. The distrust doesn’t fade from her eyes, but she grins at his suggestion. It’s feral, that grin, and he feels something hard and cold drop into his stomach. _

_“Just make sure you take plenty of extra ammo, Hancock. I don’t wanna have to come pull your ass out of the fire.”_

Nora’s nails digging into his knee pull him from the fever dream again and he jolts up and out of his seat like he’s been burned. 

“What the fuck?” he mutters, his hands going to his head and his teeth clenching so hard it hurts. There’s a tight coil of dread in his stomach. Thread zigzagging from his heart to the tips of his fingers to his mouth. He’s not high now. He’s never been soberer in his life, but it feels like it’s all unraveling. Like it’s all coming apart the longer he tries to hold it together.

“Hancock, what happened? What did you see?” Nora says from the other side of the room. He turns on her and feels himself stepping up to the edge of…something. He feels the drop in his stomach, feels a thousand memories trying to break the dam in his mind. 

“I saw you,” he says, letting the tie of his tongue loose. Let’s himself talk without thinking too much. “We were on top of a building. There was fire, an explosion. Everyone was cheering, but not you. I stepped in front of you.” He pauses, lets the threads unravel a little more. He’s losing control, but it feels right. He meets her eyes and feels his pulse in his throat, too fast and too violent. He can still feel her mouth giving under his, can still feel her hands gripping his shoulders and the soft edges of her curves against the hard lines of him.

“We kissed and then nothing. When I opened my eyes, I was back in Goodneighbor and it was like the last year had never happened. Like we’d never met and…you’d just taken Hangman’s Alley with the Minutemen.” 

“You remembered?” Nick says. When Hancock turns on him, his face is all screwed up in awe and disbelief and jealousy. The coil in his stomach ripples and loosens with a laugh that’s half-hysterical. 

“Not all of it, but some,” he says. He doesn’t understand and it all sounds a little too insane to be true, but if the smiles on Nick’s and Nora’s faces are anything to go by, he’s on the right track. 

“I think it’s about time you knew the truth,” Nora says and sinks down onto his couch. She pats the cushion beside her and he feels electrified as he crosses the room and sits down next to her. Nick settles on the other couch and lights a cigarette as Nora spins her tale.

She goes on for hours about the Institute, her son, Kellogg, dying and waking up too many times to count. It’s a stretch trying to imagine all of this could be true, but he finds himself believing her, despite himself. Finds himself accepting her story on faith and the sharp press of his own memories locked up inside his own mind. They’re in there. Just out of reach, but there. 

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Nora says. She’s got that sad little smile on her face again, the one he wants to chase with hands and lips and teeth and sweet words. And when he turns, he catches the same look on Nick’s face. That hole in the side of his face blown wide with cigarette smoke and a grim smile a mile long. 

“It is,” he agrees, because it’s the truth. 

“And I’d understand if you want out. Either of you. This is more than you signed on for and I…” When she starts to trip over her words, he reaches for her hand. Her fingers are cold as he presses them between his own. 

“We’re not going anywhere, sister,” he says around the sudden hard lump in his throat. She’s so beautiful, just like this and shit, he never thought he’d say those words. He never thought he’d feel anything for her but clever disinterest. And yet here he is, trapped between her and Nick. Bonded by something bigger than all of them. 

“If we’re gonna stick together, we need to figure out what to do about Eddie Winter,” Nick says. The smile on his face is real now. Real and bright and warm enough that he can feel it echoing inside of his chest. 

Trapped indeed.

“We’re going to need some friends,” Nora says. He doesn’t know it then. Doesn’t realize the truth of that moment until much later.

With her bright emerald eyes and cutting grin and those words, that was the moment he started to fall in love with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, okay....so WAY different direction here. A while ago, I wrote some stuff into the chapter where Hancock decides to travel with Nora and stuff happens and Nora ends up having the "this is what really happened" conversation then rather than here. I actually like this much better. It feels a lot more natural, to me anyway. And I really like adding in the memory flashbacks too, so this is really just a great excuse to do so. :D 
> 
> Thanks to ~w~ for pointing out that Hancock would be totally lost with the whole "we killed Winter once, we can do it again" thing. Let me know your thoughts!! 
> 
> <3 <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you read this....I adjusted a lot in Chapter 12. It's not mindblowing, or anything, but I definitely took it in a different direction than the original chapter and added in some things for continuity, so go back and read it if you're interested. :)
> 
> And enjoy this new chapter!

He doesn’t like the quiet.

Or, well, he _didn’t._ But this, this, he could get used to. Staring up at a canopy of stars with the breeze and the flickering warmth from the fire and the clever chirp of radroaches in the distance. Nora’d fallen asleep the moment they bunked down and her head hit the pack, but he can’t keep his eyes closed to save his life. Maybe it’s Nora. Maybe it’s Nick on the other side of the fire with the fire throwing him in sharp relief. A metal man etched in flame. 

He laughs quietly. Since when did he become so damned poetic?

“You wanna share the joke?” Nick’s gravely voice carves a trail up his spine. A spindly, steel finger that he feels all the way down to his toes. He closes his eyes, lets Nora’s warmth at his back anchor him before he moves to Nick’s side. No use in her losing sleep too. 

That’s what he tells himself, anyway. 

“Just thinkin’ about poetry, Nicky,” Hancock says as he rifles through his pockets for his pack of cigarettes. He finds it in his breast pocket. The pack is smashed all to Hell. Probably when he did that barrel roll earlier in their scuffle with the local wildlife. It’s easier out here in the open, without the raiders and Super Mutants holed up in every abandoned building in Boston proper. But there are Mole Rats and Yao gui eager to replace them, so you can’t catch a break really. 

It’s only been two days since they left Goodneighbor in Fahrenheit’s very capable hands, but it feels like a lot longer. It is as easy as breathing, falling to the rear to watch their backs and keeping his eyes peeled for any danger lurking around corners. It feels like they’ve all been traveling together for months, rather than days, and he tries not to think too much on that. 

He believes Nora. Against all odds, he believes her story about past lives. It seems more impossible not to believe her. Especially at moments like this, when he can almost remember beyond that glimmer of the past he’s been shown. Beyond the explosion, beyond the cheering Railroad, beyond Nora’s hands and lips on him.   
Sometimes he can almost remember the slip of her hand in his and a cheeky flash of teeth at one of his stupid jokes. It’s driving him crazy, that promise of almost.

“Never knew you to be the intellectual type,” Nick asks and there’s something like a smile in his voice that makes Hancock’s insides twist. It’s not unpleasant, but, well, old habits die hard. 

“That’s me. My head all full of fluff,” he says and that old hurt makes his heart clench in his chest. Those old things that haunt him still. 

_Not good enough._

_Not enough._

_Not._

It still hurts, those thoughts, and it’s worse because it’s Nick Valentine. The synth detective no one wanted anything to do with. Except, him, for some reason that still hangs its hat in his chest. A tight ball of nothing that really means everything. It’s a little easier, now, with Nora like a walking human buffer to fill those tense silences and all the years between them. It’s so much easier, now, but that knot is still there. Ever-present and pressed against the back of his throat with words and admissions left unsaid.

He’s never forgiven himself for going along with his father’s orders. He can still remember his brother’s tight smile of vengeance and the clench of his mother’s hands balled into fists at her side. He can still remember his father’s red face pushing closer and closer until their noses are nearly touching. 

God, he’d been so furious. And over nothing at all, because nothing improper had ever happened between him and Nick. No matter how much he’d wanted it to, no matter how many nights he lay awake in the dark just waiting for everyone to fall asleep so he could sneak out of his bedroom window. Nothing improper had ever happened, but oh, how he’d wanted it. 

“That you talking, or your old man?” Nick asks him, like he can see right through him. That dark and familiar heat coloring his words and his yellow eyes. Like a fan to a flame, it sparks to life inside of him, those old feelings. And it fucking hurts, that torch he’s held for Nick all these years. Never dying, never fading, just _there_ in a way that’s so present and tangible in the air between them. 

It would be so easy, to reach and take and give. But he doesn’t get that far before there’s a roaring screech and then….

The air is rent with the sudden, unmistakable sound of a Deathclaw. His heart leaps into his throat as Nora is wrenched out of sleep on the other side of the fire. Guilt and fear and lingering desire like a tempest inside of his chest. Beating against his ribcage and tearing through his irradiated heart. He’s torn, his mind tripping over and over again with the instinct to move, run, protect. He’s frozen in shock, he realizes. 

“John,” Nick mutters, the sound of it soft and gentle. Like Nick’s afraid he might spook if he’s too loud. And then he reaches out, wraps those cold metal digits around Hancock’s arm, and it’s like coming back to life. Like swimming up out of the darkness and finding gilded sunlight and fresh air. 

His body folds into action, his muscles and bones knowing what to do even if he’s still three sheets to the wind. He kicks dirt onto the small fire and the flames flicker out with a plume of smoke and dust. He can hear Nora shifting her things around. Rolling her sleeping bag up into a haphazard lump that she can tie up and strap to the back of her bag. Beside him, Nick gathers his own bag, his synthetic skin flashing pale silver in the moonlight. Hancock hovers over them both, his eyes scanning the horizon for shadows and glinting claws in the darkness. He’s got nothing to carry but himself.

It’s all quiet, now. Too quite. Which sounds like a line, but it’s not _just_ quiet. The air is thick and fraught with tension, thick enough to cut into. There’s something cold and hard pressed to the back of his neck as he thinks about Deathclaws and Nick and Nora in the same breath. He just found her. He just found Nick again, after all these years. He’d be damned if some monster would take them away now. 

“Let’s move,” Nora whispers. She bumps into him, their hips knocking in the dark, and his heart leaps into his throat. Heat trails white-hot through him as she moves ahead of him and Nick follows after her. He settles at the rear, his shotgun gripped tight and his stomach tied into anxious knots. He’d wanted uncomfortable, he’d wanted that crimson taste of adventure in his mouth. 

And he’d gotten it, for better or worse.

They creep through the Commonwealth with the lonely whisper of a breeze their only company. The sound of his and Nora’s sharp breathing the only sound in the wide expanse of land before them. None of them mutter a word, too wrapped up in their fear to hold a real conversation anyway. 

There’s no guarantee that Nick will die, not even a guarantee that he will die, but Nora. God, but he can only imagine that monster skulking out of the shadows and cutting her down. It’s claws painted red with her blood and her cold, empty, beautiful eyes staring up into the irradiated sky. It guts him just to think about, but he can’t seem to stop himself. Can’t stop from picking at that new, raw wound.

They walk straight through the night. They’re only a few hours away from Sanctuary, according to Nora, and it seems stupid to settle down again with a Deathclaw tracking them. So they walk. Even as the sky gets painted pink and orange and robin’s egg blue. Even as his legs starts to shake with exertion and his shotgun starts to slip through his fingers. 

Even as Nora falters when she sees a bridge and an old, green brass statue. Nick settles at her side and touches her right between her shoulder blades. His heart clenches hard beneath his sternum. And he thinks. 

_This is right._

_This is home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been taking me so freaking long to update. I blame school and work and my mounting list of things to do on the weekends over the next few weeks. It's been a rollercoaster ride, but the next chapter is basically written as well, so I'll probably post that on Sunday night or something. 
> 
> Thanks for all the continuing support. I love you guys so much!! <3


	14. Lessons

Sometimes, traveling with Nora is a lesson in humility. She’s got this way about her, this soft, broken thing inside of her that speaks to people. She’s had it so bad, worse than most, and yet she’s still here fighting for a better future. Fighting for a piece of the world they both still remember. 

Other times, traveling with her is a lesson in tragedy. Like when they’d discovered Earl Sterling’s fate. Blood and viscera painting the rock walls of the Mega Surgery Center cellar. Doc Crocker following soon after when he’d pulled a gun on them. Like when he’d almost lost her on their way to Goodneighbor. When he closed his eyes, he could feel the wet slip of her blood on his hands. He could hear the ring of her voice. 

_I don’t want to die. I can’t die._

It tears him up inside to realize that he’d be lost without her. He’d lost partners before, of course, but this, Nora, is different. She makes him better, sharper. And God damn him for how selfish he still could be, but he likes the way he feels around her. Not quite human, but less a mass of wires and memory chips and hard drives. Less like a machine built for a single purpose.

“She sees in you what you can’t see in yourself, Mr. Valentine,” a voice says in the darkness. He flinches, his fingers jumping to his pistol before his mind can catch up. When it does, he feels a bit like an idiot. 

“Always a pleasure, Mama Murphy,” he says, his voice colored with amusement he’s not sure he really feels. He’s not lying exactly, but the words are just this side of wrong that he wants to take them back. It’s not always a pleasure, but it _is_ always an experience.

“Flatterer,” Mama Murphy says, and not for the first time, he wonders if she might be capable of reading minds as well as the future. Her answering smile is wry as she rounds the doorstep of Nora’s old home. He doesn’t know what it says about him that he wants to usher her back outside so as not to wake Nora or John. The walls of this place are thin. Made even thinner by the gaping holes in the walls and roof. That gets his coolant pumping for reasons he can’t even begin to fathom. 

Mama Murphy settles in the armchair across from him, her eyes knowing and her smile even more so. 

“Something’s got you all revved up, Mr. Valentine,” she teases. He swallows, a human habit he never could quite shake, and it feels a bit like an admission. So, just maybe, he can fathom but there are some lines he can’t cross. Won’t cross. Because of who Nora is, but more because of who he is. 

“I’m sure you saw this comin’ the first time you set eyes on me, huh?” he says. He reaches into his breast pocket for his cigarettes. Generously lights one for himself and for her. It’s not the chems she’s so fond of, but he thinks by the small flash of pleasure across her face as she inhales, that it’s close enough for her. 

“Not everything is written in stone. Time can stretch and bend and break in ways that you can’t even imagine,” she replies, ever cryptic. He laughs and it's strangled in his throat. Something stuck between strangled and bitter and he wonders when he became this person. 

“In another life, I’d dismiss the idea entirely. But in _this_ life, I’m inclined to believe you. According to Nora, we found Eddie Winter in his vault without a hitch and this time around, he managed to crawl his way out and start his reign of terror all over again,” Nick says, his throat suddenly too tight and his fingers stretched thin around his cigarette. He can’t believe it, even after this last week, that it’s real. Seeing that man again had done something to him. Made him realize how suddenly Nora and John and everything he’d ever cared about could be taken away. 

Winter was out there, now. Prowling the Wealth, waiting for his moment to strike at the heart of them. 

“Well, maybe different paths lead to the same destinations,” Mama Murphy says. He shakes himself, and nearly jumps again when he realizes she’s not sitting across from him anymore. He turns in his seat and just catches the soft whisper of her laughter as she rounds the open doorway. Disappearing as quickly as she’d come. 

He chuckles, unable to help himself. Even with this dark, cold thing bottled up inside of him, he can still feel it can’t he? Because travelling with Nora isn’t just about humility or tragedy. It’s there when she tells a new settlement that she’s cleared out the next of Ghouls or Raiders or Super Mutants for them. It’s there every time she strolls into Sanctuary. It’s there when he looks at her, when he sees John looking at her, and that bright shining thing burns alight in his chest. 

No, sometimes, running with her is a lesson in hope. And that’s why he loves her. 

He loves her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY about the long wait between updates. I'm afraid this is going to be pretty much the norm until my finals are over, which will be April 27th. But we can do this! Only 4 more weeks left! 
> 
> Thank you for all the support, for all the kudos and comments and subscriptions. You guys are the best!!! <3


	15. Chapter 15

She wakes and there’s nothing soft about it. Her dreams were plagued with fire and demanding fingers and red eyes. She’s wrenched awake, her heart thumping loud and fast and her lips opening on silent screams. 

She can feel him. Like a nightmare come to life lurking in the shadows of her old bedroom. His breath is on her face. His fingers are touching the back of her hand. She wants to flip herself inside out. To get to the parts of her that he hasn’t touched. 

And she is shaking. From anger or fear, she doesn’t know. He made it personal when he tried to burn Goodneighbor to the ground, when he shot Hancock. 

Hancock. Just in the other room. She’d torn Shaun’s things apart to make way for a bed and dresser in there. Thrown out the blocks and the stuffed animals and even that mobile that Nate had fixed up for him. She’d trashed it all. What did it say about her that she didn’t feel even a moment of regret? What did it say about her that she’d tear apart her old life so quickly for her new one? 

She didn’t give the idea time to ferment. She pushed herself to her feet with shaking arms and shaking legs and made her way to the guest room, trying to be as quiet as possible. Outside, she could hear the clicking and chirping of rad roaches and Dogmeat’s soft chuffs while he slept and the crackle of the fire set in their new fire pit across the way. Sturges nearly shit himself when she gave him the project the last time she’d been here. She grinned at the memory. 

And then she was there. In the spare room with him only a touch away. He was there in blurred lines drawn in the darkness. His narrow chest brought high by a deep breath and falling again as he exhaled. His arms clasped behind his head. Soft snores filling the air. 

God but she missed him. Even with him remembering things, it wasn’t the same. There was still something unbreachable between them. Something that stayed her hand, stopped his easy grin. And she hated it. For a moment she hated whatever had done this to them so vehemently that she had to curl her fingers into fists to stop from lashing out. There was nothing in this room to fight. 

She freezes when she hears something in the hallway. When something warm steps up behind her and her nose is met with the familiar scent of oil and gunpowder. She’d almost forgotten about Nick. Stuck out in the living room while the two of them are sleeping. 

“You okay?” he says and the hair at the back of her neck stands to attention when she imagines the crook of his finger touching her spine. She straightens, electrified by his presence in a way that she’s not sure she wants to acknowledge. And like she’s tied to strings, she turns. So carefully as to not touch him. His bright yellow eyes are searing in the darkness, his alabaster lips curved into a small smile that curls something dark and heady in her chest. 

Then she remembers that he’s waiting for her answer. She clears her throat. Tucks a strand of her wayward blonde hair back behind her ear. 

“Fine, just couldn’t sleep,” she says.

“Could use some coffee right about now,” he replies, making her crack a smile, as he must have known it would. He holds his arm out for her to go out into the living room. Like it’s one of those old movies full of gentlemen and women in corsets floating around a ballroom. Like chivalry isn’t dead and the world hasn’t gone to shit. That something curls up even tighter inside of her. 

She can feel him just behind her. All warm with his processors ticking. She closes her eyes for just a moment. Wishing and wanting so much just to turn around and step into him. It would be so easy. It would be so damned easy. 

She doesn’t. Just twists her fingers into fists as she crosses the room to the threadbare couch now pushed up against the back wall where their television used to be. 

“You know,” she says, once they’re out of earshot of the guest room, “There aren’t a lot of things I miss about the old world, but coffee is definitely in the top five.”

“At least there’s still booze,” he quips. It does the trick. She lets loose a surprised peel of laughter. She claps a hand over her mouth and through the open doorway, she can see Dogmeat shift in his sleep. 

“And cigarettes,” she says, suddenly remembering the pack tucked away in her jacket. She pulls it out and offers him the box. 

“Aw, you shouldn’t have,” Nick says, his smile sly and just a little bit embarrassed. 

“Course I should have. How else can I thank you for saving my life?” she says. 

And Nick’s funny like that. He never reacts in the way that she’d expect. He’s got a dark sense of humor sometimes and other times, his brows furrow and his lips draw down in pain. Like now. 

“You don’t need to thank me for that,” he says, his fingers twisting around the cigarette pack. The noise of it crinkling sets her teeth on edge. He looks so damned sad, she can’t stand it. It’s dangerous, she knows, but she reaches for one of his hands. It comes with only a little resistance. His synthetic flesh weathered and hot to the touch. She threads their fingers together and squeezes once. 

“I do, Nick. Without you, I would have died, I know that,” she says. It’s meant to be comforting, but it does just the opposite it seems. He pulls away from her hand, the cigarettes still gripped in his other hand. He stands and it’s like he’s pulling a piece of her away with him. 

“But you don’t. God, if you knew. I was just - I had to. I didn’t know then, but I know now, and I couldn’t have let you….” his breath stills on the word, like he can’t even imagine saying it. At this, she stands too, and what she knows is that this is it. The moment of truth. 

“Nick,” she says and she can feel his name caught in her throat like a trapped bird. Flapping and beating under skin and blood and veins and she wants to rip that feeling from her and push it into him. Wants him to understand. He doesn't reply. Just shifts on his feet. His hands are balled into fists and he won't look at her.

“Nick,” she tries again as she steps up next to him. She can only see his silhouette like this, turned as he is towards the bookshelves built into the walls. His eyes are closed and he’s grinding his teeth hard enough together that they’re making an awful scraping sound. She reaches for him. Slides her fingers around his wrist and tugs him around. He follows the motion, his eyes still closed. She watches him. Just for a moment. Her heart so filled up with love for him that she’s sure it’s written all over her face. How could he not see it? How could he not know? 

With her wild heart in her throat and her skin burning, she leans into him like she wanted to before. His breath ghosting warm over her cheeks. She feels the moment that he touches her. His hands slipping around her waist making her chest tight with fear and exhilaration. She steps into him and with her lips only a hairsbreadth away, she asks. 

“Can I?” 

“Yes,” he says, the sound barely audible over the rushing in her ears. He sounds strangled, like he’s barely holding onto whatever semblance of decency they’ve got strung between them. She grins, a quick flash of teeth and tongue, and then she’s closing the distance between them. 

Kissing Nick Valentine isn’t like kissing anyone else. His lips are soft, weathered like the rest of him, and so very warm. There’s so much heat. There’s the taste of smoke and oil and metal in his mouth. She breathes it in, breathes him in, like she could lock away the taste and feel of him into her heart. He groans, a soft thing that trembles over their lips and she wants to lock that away too. She doesn’t know how long they stay like that. Her hands pressed against his chest and the side of his face, fingers moving gently over exposed metal and torn flesh. His hands moving up into her flaxen hair with just the barest pull of it from the base of her skull. Everything is flaring light and infinite behind her closed eyes. She doesn’t want to pull away from that, pull away from him, but she has to breathe. 

She pulls away and his forehead falls to the side of her cheek. His chest is heaving too, his processors clicking like angry bees and his eyes blown wide with surprise or desire, or some combination of the two. 

“Was wondering when the two of you would get to it,” Hancock says only a few feet away. They both jump, Nick’s hand in a vice grip around her forearm. It’s tight enough to hurt, but she can’t seem to care around the twisting motion of her blood beneath her skin. 

Because she knows what this is. This is bigger than her. Bigger than all of them. 

The next person to talk, the next words to fill this room will decide everything. And the words crawl up from her chest. Where they’ve been curled ever since this entire thing began. Maybe she didn’t know it until now, but they were. Waiting for this moment. Waiting for the time to split apart and shatter the air. 

“Are you just going to watch, or are you going to join us?” 

And the matching grins that break over their faces are worth every syllable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am super freaking nervous about posting this chapter. Like everything is so real right now and I honestly can't deal with the idea that this might be wrong or in some way offensive to anyone, so please let me know. I'm starting off slow for now just because of the fact that 1. I haven't ever been in a poly relationship personally and 2. I haven't read many fics about polyamorous relationships either. So, please, please, please let me know if anything is offensive from this point out. 
> 
> *bites nails as I await the comments*
> 
> Also, wanted to give a huge shoutout to all of the people that are still actually waiting for this fic to be finished. I'm going to try my hardest to get it done by the end of the summer mostly because I know once school hits again, I'm going to have no time for anything at all. So thanks guys! I love each and every comment, kudo, bookmark, and subscription. <3 <3


	16. Chapter 16

She’s shaking as Hancock steps forward. Hesitantly, so carefully, like she and Nick might spook if he moves too quickly. Her heart is in her throat. It’s impossible to breathe, speak, think, around the sudden tension in the room. His eyes are like molten metal in the dark and the grin he’d shown at her invitation has quieted into something curled at the edges and so, so bright. It wrenches at something just behind her heart to see him like this. Cautious, yes, but so sure. 

He’s close enough to touch now. Close enough to reach out and hold. But she doesn’t. It’s like she’s frozen solid. Paralyzed by fear or hope or some twisting combination of the two. She wants this. Wants them so much and she realizes that she’s never wanted anything this badly since she and Nate decided to try and have a baby. It’s terrifying. 

“Her breath stutters in her chest. There’s a beat. A gentle, unbreakable pause where the future and the past and the present break apart to render this moment. And then he’s there. Grinning down at her with the most beautiful, heartbreaking smile she’s ever seen on him. She thaws a little. Enough to reach out to him. He catches her hand in mid air, presses her fingers against his chest. 

His other hand catches Nick’s and they stand there, a circle of joined hands. It feels good. It feels right. 

“Are we really gonna do this?” he asks. His voice has dropped an octave and a jolt of fire ripples out from her throat down to the apex between her thighs as she’s dragged forward into his space. Like a moth to a flame. 

“Only if you’re sure,” she says, the brittle shock of her words collecting like ash in her mouth. She’ll wait. Of course she’ll wait if that’s what he wants. She glances over her shoulder at Nick, his amber eyes glowing in the darkness. She smiles. “If you’re both sure.” At this, Nick steps forward too. His hip bumps against hers and his fingers skim along the edge of her waist. Pressing just hard enough to tease. She shudders, that roaring fire within her fanned into an inferno. She watches his hand joined with Hancock’s. Watches the synthetic skin flashing like a silverfish against the dark stain of Hancock’s ruined, beautiful skin.

“I think we’ve danced around this for long enough,” Nick says. And with just those words, Hancock’s expression cracks. He’s swept forward as if carried on a wave and when their lips meet, it’s like something cracks inside of her too. Something breaking open. Breaking free.

*** 

It’s Nick who decides. Nick who pushes and pulls and it breaks her heart to see it when she realizes. He’s never had this before. Never had romance or a relationship before, not in this body. Barring whatever had happened between him and Hancock all those years ago. And watching them, watching Hancock’s eyes crinkling at the corners as Nick kisses the corner of his mouth, watching Nick’s fingers flutter across Hancock’s wrists, she knows what they had. What they might have had. It’s written so clear between them and she wonders again why she never saw it before. She might have been so caught up in Hancock and the Institute before, but she doesn’t think so. She doesn’t know what’s different about this time, but she’s glad for it. 

“You’re thinking awfully hard over there, sunshine,” Hancock says. The mattress shifts beside her as he plops down next to her, right between her and Nick. He catches her hand and there’s something soft and brilliant in the way that he presses her fingers to the place over his heart. She’d set candles earlier so they could see and the shadows dance around in his gunmetal gray eyes. There’s a lightness there that she hasn’t seen in what feels like a lifetime. Several lifetimes even.

“Nora,” Nick says. She lifts her eyes to his and she breaks apart when she sees his expression. Gentle. So gentle. And his smile has faded somewhat, his eyes sad and haunted. Turning the knot in her chest. 

“I…” she starts. But what can she say, really? She wants this. Has wanted it for far longer than she’d ever realized, but she’s also scared shitless. That it might end. That it might not. There’s a tightness in her throat now. It’s like she’s winded. Like she’s just run a marathon and she can’t get air into her fast enough. 

“Hey,” Nick says as he moves behind her and brushes her hair back over her shoulder. His fingers are light, dancing on her skin and stoking those flames from before as he goes. He’s a warm weight at her back and between that and her hand still on Hancock’s chest, she feels a little calmer. A little more centered. Nick presses a soft kiss to the nape of her neck and she shudders. And it settles something deep inside of her when he wraps an arm tight around her waist. “Now, I’ve never done - this before. I never even though it could be possible, let alone with you two, but I do know that the key to any relationship is communication. So that’s what we have to do. Talk and we’ll listen, doll.” 

She meets Hancock’s eyes and he nods, the firm, broad set of his shoulders squared up and that tilt to his mouth tells her everything she needs to know. Nick’s right and Hancock agrees with him. So she breathes in. Once, twice. And holds on to her boys cradled around her like the warmest, softest blanket, and tells them everything. 

“It’s just...with all of the shit waiting out there in the dark - the Institute and now Eddie Winter, I’m just scared that now that I’ve got you, I’m going to lose you. And the thing is, I wake up sometimes and it’s like I’m just waiting to end up back in Vault 111. I keep waiting to see that frosted glass in front of my face and Nate being shot, Shaun taken away, and Kellogg’s face with that stupid fucking smile. I keep waiting for everything to reset, and it didn’t matter so much before because I could just start over without losing anything, but now I’ve got you both and I don’t want to lose this. And now that Eddie Winter’s in the picture, it changes everything. He attacked Goodneighbor to get to me. God knows what else, who else, he might go through. I’m fucking scared,” she tells them. And that’s not even touching on her own special brand of fucked up that’s been running rampant since she got into this mess. 

“And it’s not even the worst of it. I haven’t told you the worst of it,” she says, closing her eyes. She grips Hancock’s hard and when Nick loops her arm around her waist and finds her other hand, she almost feels strong enough to face her terrible truth. 

“I want to save the Institute.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well then...I know it's been a really long time since I last updated and all I can really say is that I was seriously conflicted over this chapter. On the one hand, I wanted to write a really hot nsfw scene. And on the other, I felt like it wasn't quite the right time for them. So yeah I've been working on this shitty thing for a long freaking time and finally settled on this, which isn't quite I thought it might end up being. But, the good news is that after almost a year of writing this series, I've finally figured out where it's heading. I promise the next chapter won't take nearly as long to get out. 
> 
> I love you guys so much. The support for this story has been pretty unbelievable and I'm just glad that we're all on this ride together. <3 <3


	17. Chapter 17

His first instinct is to pull away. Because saving the Institute isn’t just crazy, it’s insane. 

“Nora,” he says. There’s pain in that single word. Pain and anger and shock and fear all wrapped up in her name. And he hates that he can’t hide better, can’t shield her from the things that are suddenly curled up too tight in his chest. He tries to breathe around it. Tries to reign it in, but then she’s pulling away and it’s too late. 

He watches her go. Feels it as she pulls away. Oh, she’s gotten under her skin. Worse still, she’s gotten into his heart. He thought - God, but he’d been so stupid. So fucking naive. She moves to the edge of the bed, her shoulders pulled forward and her eyes darting wildly. Like a woman looking for a way out. 

“I know how fucked up it sounds. I know, Nick,” she says and it lances through him, his name falling from her mouth. It cuts, that name. Because it’s the first time she’s said it like this. Like it might be the last time. 

He glances at Hancock, who is looking between them with his gray eyes filled with terror. He feels it too then, the precipice they’re standing atop. Hancock meets his eyes and holds out a hand. He very nearly launches himself to catch it. Spindly, metal fingers meeting scarred flesh and heat. He clings to that, holds fast to him like he’s the only thing keeping him grounded. 

Hancock smiles and it’s so small, so quick, that he might have missed it if he hadn’t been looking at him so intently. And it bubbles inside of him. Opens up into his chest and fills it and fills it and fills it until there is no more space. He loves him, he thinks. He knows. 

He turns his head and there’s Nora, so small and tucked into herself and still so beautiful. He wants to go to her. Wants to curl around her and shield her from the world. He’d do anything for her, he realizes. And that’s as much I kick in his metal gut as anything. He holds up his free hand in supplication. He can feel the buzz of his processors on his lips. Can feel time ticking away inside of him. As fast and shallow as a hummingbird’s wings. 

“Just talk to us, Nora. We can’t help if you don’t tell us what’s going on,” he says and when she picks her head up off her knees, he knows those are the right words. Or at least as right as he’s going to get here, now. She looks like she’s seen a ghost, like there’s something dark and hungry on her heels, but he can see the life returning to her eyes. A brightness that makes his chest swell again with those words he can’t seem to shake. 

“It’s not about Shaun. There were good people there. There were children there. And I let them burn without a second thought because I wanted them all to pay for what they did to my family,” she says. 

“You weren’t the only one who wanted them all dead,” he said. Her expression cracks, unshed tears gather in her eyes, and he knows then that he’ll help her. God, but he’s wrapped around her fingers. John too. The both of them have him strung up between them. Caught and held and drowning in his love for them. 

“I just...I’ve tried so fucking hard to make the ‘Wealth a better place and I failed that first time and every time after it. And then the last time, this time,” she pauses to suck in a breath. And he can see her mentally steeling herself for whatever she might say next, “This time all I could think when I woke up in the vault was that I had to save the institute. Take what those bastards do and start using it for good. They have technology there that made my head spin and I know I just touched the tip of the iceberg. We could start living and not just surviving.” 

“I get it, Nora, but how do you plan on doing that? We’re three people. You’ve got the Minutemen, but fuck, we’d need an army to take them on,” Hancock says. Nick can feel the tremble of his hand and he just tightens his hold. 

Across from them, Nora looks over her shoulder. Staring out into the tiny gap at the corner of the roof where they can just see the stars. She’s smiling now, the gentle curve of her lips reminding him that she isn’t just beautiful. She’s good, too. Too good for this new world of theirs. 

“I think it’s time I walked The Freedom Trail,” she says. Nick can feel Hancock’s gaze like a weight on his skin. He’s overheating, he knows, as he hears his servos working double time and coolant rushing through his system. It doesn’t help. He can’t look away from her. Away from that smile, away from the warm flicker of shadows across her face. 

“You’re serious,” he says when she doesn’t offer anything else. 

“It’s either that or the Brotherhood of Steel and I’m not about to go to those bastards for help, given what they think about ghouls and synths,” she says. Her teeth flash in the darkness. The smile doesn’t meet her eyes and he suppresses the urge to go to her. He wonders how long she’s been carrying this around, this truth that’s as cutting as anything else. He wonders how long this has been building up inside of her. 

“Who gives a shit about that, Nora?” Hancock says and there’s something wild, but certain, on his face now. Curling the edges of his lips and turning his eyes nearly gold in the candlelight. “If the Brotherhood is what you need to get in there, then we can deal with a little name calling.” 

He can sense as much as see what it costs John to say those words. He feels the tension in their joined fingers, watches the sudden tension rising in his shoulders. And across from them, he can see Nora chewing over the words too. There’s a moment, two, and the last thing he expects is for her to come to them. But she does. Slides across the sheets fast enough to leave him blinking at her. The look on her face is something he’s never seen before. Fierce and full of fire. She grips Hancock’s face between her hands and looks right up into him. 

“There won’t be any name calling because I don’t need them. Maxson and his merry band can go eat shit for all I care. I’m not putting you in the line of fire just so that I can take on the Institute,” she says. Then she turns to him, that same burning passion singeing him at the edges. “Either of you.” 

He nods, because what else is there to do in the face of that level of determination. He won’t say no, he can’t. And when she smiles this time, it meets her eyes. Fills her up and shines through in the dark. He’s never seen anything, anyone, so beautiful as her. 

“You know we can’t say no when you go all ‘Hero of the Commonwealth’ on us,” he says, that teasing lilt to his voice surprising a laugh from her. He wants to bottle up that sound and store it right next to his heart. Safe and protected and immortal. 

She grins and somehow manages to tug them both down onto the bed again. The fall into a jumbled heap. Limbs tangled and fumbling in the dark to try and get comfortable. He ends up curled around her and she ends up curled around Hancock. It’s different, but it’s so good. And that feeling of rightness settles deep into his metal bones. This is where he belongs. This is where he fits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was tired of these idiots fighting when they could just be cuddling, so here we are!! Obviously, not everything is perfect just yet, but they're a little bit closer to it. One day they'll be happy and just _be_ but today is not that day. 
> 
> As ever, thanks to everyone leaving kudos and comments and bookmarks. I can't tell you how much it means to me that you guys are enjoying this crazy ride. I promise that the next chapter will be a bit more action packed. We may even run into our favorite Railroader? Who knows, we'll see lol. Can't wait to see what you guys think of this one. <3 <3


	18. Secrets

She comes to in measures. First, there’s the slight chill in the air as the wind blows through her all but abandoned home. It raises her skin and makes her toes clench around the sudden cold. Then there’s the soft clatter of plates and cups being rattled around. The faint, but very present murmur of voices across the road. The sizzle and pop of whatever Marcy has cooking over the fire. Then she feels it. The gentle press of lips to her cheek. She makes a noise, something stuck between a hum and a moan. The lips don’t stop. Trailing along the ridges of her face, over the shell of her ear, and down. Then a nearly-sharp nip where her neck meets her shoulder. She nearly jolts out of her skin, her back arching like the bend of a perfectly crafted bow. Tethered and ready to pluck. She relaxes just enough for him to reach for her. Fingers slip beneath the hem of her shirt across warm skin and coiled muscle. She gasps as Nick’s metal hand flutters across her stomach. He grips her waist, his touch so sure, and her heart jumps. 

“Morning,” he says. Like he doesn’t have her trapped. Like he isn’t driving her wild with the barest of touches.

“Mm,” is all she manages before he finally kisses her. It starts slow. Just a brush of lips against hers. But then his hands slip, riding the slope of her hips with her pants hanging low. He’s so close and she’s so ready for him. God does she want this. She wants him. 

She surges upward and claims his mouth, her hands clinging to the lapels of his shirt and pulling him down to her. He meets her inch for inch. She licks inside his mouth, feeling that same patchwork of metal and skin, tasting cigarette smoke and old books and something so uniquely Nick that she doesn’t quite have the words to describe it. And when he carefully dips his tongue inside her mouth, she feels like she might combust. Like there’s fire in her veins and it’s burning her up, up, up. She’s already wound up so tight and she knows, when he does touch her, it won’t take long to crest that wave. For now, it’s enough to have his tongue in her mouth and his fingers nearly there. It’s enough to feel the solid weight of him above her. 

He’s slow and thorough like he’s afraid she might pull away if he goes too fast. When she doesn’t, she can almost feel the tension bleed from him. Can feel the same urgency in his movements matched by her own. And she’s overwhelmed, suddenly and so completely that it closes off the air in her lungs and fills her eyes with tears. 

Just when she opens her mouth to say the words she’s kept trapped inside of her, there is a knock at the front door. Gentle, but succinct. Preston. 

“General, when you have a moment, there’s something we need to discuss,” he says. Just loud enough not to wake her if she was still sleeping. But of course he knows she isn’t. Her face burns. 

“Give me ten minutes,” she calls, her head falling back against her pillows with a sigh. “No rest for the wicked I guess.” She knows there’s things to be done. She knows there’s bad people to kill and settlement concerns to deal with and plans to be made, and she feels sick with guilt that she’d rather be holed up somewhere with Hancock and Nick, but can she really be faulted for wanting a single day of peace to gather herself?

“You know,” Nick drawls above her. She jumps when she remembers that he’s still there with her. He’s smiling when she lifts her eyes to his, his gaze flashing wicked in the morning sun. “I can think of a lot of things we could do in ten minutes.” 

She grins and he leans down to kiss her again. 

***

Preston is flushed red by the time she makes her way to his - their, really - office at the back of Sanctuary. She tries not to think, as she always does when she comes in here, about barbeques with the Jamison’s. Tries not to think about Wendy’s sweet, earnest disposition and Harold’s predilection for dark, but beautiful poetry to include on their book club reading list. They were the closest thing to friends that she and Nate had had in Sanctuary. They weren’t like the Wilde’s or the Michaelson’s, who were better at minding everyone else’s business than their own. They’d been different, and she and Nate had left them to die outside of the gates to Vault 111. She could still hear Wendy’s wrenching, uncontrollable sobs and Harold’s pleas sometimes. 

“You okay, Sunshine?” Hancock says from his spot at her shoulder. They’d run into him outside, balancing three cups of what could only loosely be called coffee with a knowing shade to his smile. 

Nick is on her other side, his quick gaze taking in every inch of the place and his hand wrapped firmly around hers. She nods, but it’s all wrong and when she meets his eyes, God, but he isn’t quick enough to wipe the expression from his face. Sad and angry and filled with enough love to take her breath away. It hurts, that look. It pierces straight through her. Cuts her to the quick. He reaches for her free hand and she latches onto him like she’s on the brink. And Hell, maybe she is. 

“Just old ghosts,” she says by way of an explanation. She ducks her head and toes absently at a dark stain on the floor. These old structures had been made to last. Last they had, but it hadn’t been pretty. Not even close. 

“Ah, the gang’s all here,” Sturges says as he squeezes in behind the three of them in the doorway. He makes his way to Preston’s side, flashing a grin in her direction. He only turns away when she smiles back. He hunches over the desk he’d pulled together from old pieces of rotting wood and bent metal. It wasn’t pretty either, but it was functional. 

Her eyes move from him to Preston. It’s only then that she notices the tight lines of Preston’s shoulders and that furrow between his brows. Whatever this is, it’s serious. Anxiety twists her stomach and she suddenly, almost, wishes she’d actually managed to get a good night’s sleep last night. 

“Not that I don’t appreciate the wake-up call, but whatever’s got you so worried, just tell me, Preston,” she says. 

He glances up at her and then back down to the desk. To the papers set in haphazard piles to the side and a rough map of the Commonwealth spread out across the rest of the empty space, held down at the corners by random pieces of junk around Sanctuary. 

“It might be nothing, but some of our Provisioners have gone missing,” Preston says. It takes a moment for his words to process, for her mind to catch up with her ears. And when it does, God, but she wish it hadn’t. There’s something dark and cold sliding down her spine. 

“Who?” 

“Rosie, Dunn, and Elliott. Elliott made it to Hangman’s Alley a day ago and stuck around until about noon then took off towards Oberland Station. I guess they were pretty low on ammo,” Preston explains, not looking at her, but instead looking down at the map spread out before him. All of the settlements are marked along with the supply lines they’d assigned. 

“Did they tell you that? Maria and Alycia?” she says. Just thinking about the two sisters at Oberland sends a jolt of fear through her heart. She has a very, very bad feeling about all of this. 

“No, couldn’t get through to them. There was nothing but static from their frequency,” Preston replies and if anything, he seems even more worried now. No doubt fueled along by the thickening buzz of anxiety hanging in the air. She’s holding on to Hancock and Nick, her only tethers to the ground, and she knows her grip is too tight, but she can’t let go. 

“What about Rosie and Dunn?” she asks, though she doesn’t really want to know. 

“Same thing. Rosie left The Slog three days ago and never made it to Coastal Cottage. And Dunn didn’t make it to Finch Farm.”

“Shit,” she says and drops their hands. She steps forward and plants her hands on the desk. She’s leaning heavily on it now and there’s a nervous tension sliding along her shoulders, down her arms, and into her hands. It makes them shake and makes her grit her teeth against the sensation. She knows what this is, but she doesn’t want to say it. Not yet. Not until she’s sure. 

She can feel them all looking at her. Looking _to_ her and she’s never been more terrified of being their leader. Because this is on her. She knew that bastard was out there and she didn’t set off right away to plot his demise. No, she’d staggered her way home with her boys and she’d honestly been enjoying herself in Sanctuary up until now. And now the people she’d sworn to protect were being attacked, most likely killed, because of her. Because of their association with her. 

She needs to stop shaking and get her head on straight. She knows that, but she can’t help thinking about Eddie Winter, thinking about his red eyes and the way he’d touched her. It hadn’t been a threat. No, because that would be too easy for a man like him. It had been a promise. 

_I look forward to seeing you again, Nora._

He’d known then, hadn’t he? He’d known he was going to attack her settlements and take her people. And what had she been doing in all that time that he’d been plotting and planning? 

It’s that thought that allows her to stand again. She didn’t come all of this way just to be beaten down by some asshole with a God complex. She hadn’t suffered through living and dying more times than she could count for this. It will hurt. It will, but she’s been through worse and she’ll come out the other side and when all of this is done, then she can carve out her little slice of heaven with her boys. If they’ll still have her after this. 

“It’s Eddie Winter,” she says, her back lightning rod straight and her head clearer than it had been in a long time. “He’s taking our settlements and he’s going to make a move.”

“You’re sure?” Nick asks, the timbre of his voice low and angry like the beginnings of a great storm. She nods. 

“He’s the only one that makes sense. Shaun wouldn’t do this.”

“Wait,” Preston says. And God, but she’d almost forgotten he was there. Almost forgotten that he didn’t know. “Who’s Shaun. And who the Hell is Eddie Winter?”

They all stand there, silent, poised on the edge of her truths. And she feels that fear unfurl in her chest. This is it. 

“Secrets always come back to haunt us,” a voice says from the doorway. She doesn’t need to turn to know who it is. She knows Mama Murphy’s voice about as well as she knows her own. So she takes a deep breath and holds out her hand. She hears the shuffle of Mama Murphy’s gentle gait. Waits for her old, weathered skin to meet her own. The future and the past and the present all swirling within her, held in their joined hands. 

There’s not much time for anything more than running towards the Fight. The war that seems to clutch at her heels no matter the time or place she finds herself in. And she wonders, as she begins to tell her tale for what she hopes will be the last time, if it will ever end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I want to get some stuff out of the way before going on to thank you guys for being so, so awesome and patient with me as I try to finish up this story lol. 
> 
> So, just some life stuff going on with me. I am going to be getting my wisdom teeth out in two weeks, so that's kind of scary, but that also means that I'll be taking off like three days from work and have a five day weekend. I'm really hoping to get a lot done on this story, but I guess we'll see what happens. Also, I will be going back to school two weeks after that, the 21st, which I know a lot of you probably are too. I will only be taking two classes, so maybe it won't be so bad, but I'm guessing that my writing might have to take a back burner for a while. But I still have every intention of finishing this story and I've already got some stuff in mind for a Part Three once this leg of Nora's journey is over. But, you guys have been amazingly patient with me and I am so grateful. It's been a really, really long time since my muse has stuck to a fic like this. It's been about seven years and obviously, I've written stuff in that time, but nothing like this project. And you guys encourage me to keep writing. So thank you. I know words alone can't express how much the support means to me, but I hope you understand how much it means. :) I love all of you! <3 <3
> 
> Also, do you guys have any songs that make you think of this ot3? Or just the characters in general? I'm thinking about doing a playlist for them, but I've got no ideas lol.


	19. Chapter 19

They have a plan. Or the semblance of one anyway, and in the old days, it might have calmed her, but she knows better now. She knows that plans are made and broken and made again, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll work. Especially when the stakes are so high. She has settlers out there, probably trapped, more probably dead, and no matter what she does, more people are going to get hurt because of her. Because of the problem that she’d let out of her sight upon the wasteland.

Terror still curdles in her chest at the thought of him. Of those red eyes and that not-smile on his face. Of his hands curling over her skin and his breath on her neck. And not even Hancock and Nick at her shoulders can offer comfort. 

“So we’re clear then?” she says and her voice rings out in the small room. It’s hot in here, the heat swelling in the cramped space as the day burns bright beyond the doorway. Mama Murphy had slipped out after she laid out her torrid past, claiming the heat was too much. It hadn’t been bad before, but as the chill in the air burned away with the rising sun, she started to feel it. 

She feels Hancock shift, his fingers gentle on the back of her hand. It burns through her, shines brighter than anything, and she has to trap the sigh that tries to escape. She can’t afford those feelings right now, can’t afford to give in to her racing heart. 

“Preston, you’re going to take a handful of Minutemen and scout out Oberland. Sturges, you’re going to do the same for The Slog. I’m taking Nick to go check out Country Crossing, and I’m leaving Hancock in charge while we’re away. With any luck, this will just be a case of broken technology, but if not…” She lets the statement go unchecked. Lets her words die in the heat and it’s then that she senses a shift in the air. A sudden tightening, electric buzz that makes her look around. 

It’s Preston, shifting on his feet, with an expression of unease. When she meets his eyes, he stops, but the tight look on his face remains. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he asks. He says it so carefully like he’s not sure whose toes he might be stepping on or where they might stand when this conversation is over. She stares at him for a moment before glancing over her shoulder at Hancock. He’s glowering, his eyes shining and his lips barely pulled back from his teeth. He looks nearly feral and it’s enough to make her heart skip a beat. She reaches for him and tucks her hand into his. 

“I realize that you don’t know him-,” she begins, but Preston cuts her off almost immediately. 

“I do know him, Nora, by reputation,” he says, seething now. The tips of his ears are pink now and his eyes are glowing just as brightly as John’s. She wonders what he could have possibly heard to make him so vehemently against Hancock staying and keeping watch over Sanctuary. 

“Preston,” she says, forcing herself to be calm and collected. She can feel the thrumming edge of excitement in Hancock’s fingers and she knows that if worst came to worst, she’d choose him every time. Because she knows him, the real him. It isn’t enough to know what he’d done or hadn’t done as the Mayor of Goodneighbor. “You don’t trust him, I get that. But I trust him. I’d trust him with my life and I trust him to keep Sanctuary safe. Everyone here is armed and ready to put up a fight if this is all a trap to draw us away, but Hancock is the only one that can lead them. They need direction, they need a finger to point them towards the fighting. He can do that.” 

She can see the gears turning in Preston’s head, his eyes swaying from her to Hancock and back again. And she can see the slow change in his eyes. The glow fades and his expression softens, as she hoped it would. He nods, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Of course, General,” Preston says. Sturges nods beside him. She looks at them both, among the first friends she’d ever made in this world, and she wonders how she got to be so lucky. How accepting they’d been of not only her convoluted past but also her orders as their leader. She nods too and starts to open her mouth when Sturges grins suddenly, as if he could see the thoughts running through her head. 

“And we’ll check in at every settlement along the way, boss, you have our word.”

“No heroics,” she says, clapping her hand on his shoulder. He smiles, softer now, and the two of them both nod before making their way outside. They’re to leave within the hour, taking only the best, most capable Minutemen with them. They’d had to radio the settlement at Red Rocket down the road just to have more people at their backs and apprise them of the situation, just in case.

She listens to them leave. She listens to the twist of dirt and grass beneath their feet as they move out into the settlement. She listens to the sigh of the wind blowing in from the east, smelling of rain and the buzz of an oncoming storm. And feels that terror in her chest curled up so tight she’s lucky she can breathe around it. A terror so real and so visceral that she can almost taste it on her tongue. It isn’t just Eddie Winter, it isn’t the promise of broken, dead settlers that they’re going to find. It’s that she has to leave Hancock behind to take care of things while she’s gone. It’s that she has to leave him behind at all. 

To his credit, he waits until Preston and Sturges are completely out of earshot before he rounds on her with balled up fists and fire in his expression.

“I don’t fucking like this,” he says. She doesn’t want to look at him, doesn’t want to feel afraid of what’s going to happen, but she does. Because she owes it to him and she owes it to herself to look him in the eye. She’s never hated being the General of the Minutemen so much as right now. 

“I don’t like it either, Hancock, but with all of us gone, the only other person I trust to take care of Sanctuary is you.” 

“You’ve got Piper here or Marcy or hell, even Mama Murphy might make a better candidate for leadership of this place than me.”

“No,” she says and this truth between them stings. She can feel it curling low in her stomach and sending waves of nausea through her. All she’s wanted since waking up in this life is to find him and be with him and it’s come to this. Leaving him. “You’re the Mayor of Goodneighbor. If you can take care of them, then taking over Sanctuary will be a piece of cake. You’re the only one that I trust to do this.”

She takes a half step forward, drawn into his orbit and her skin burning from the proximity of him, when Nick speaks. She’d almost forgotten he was there. 

“None of us want this, Hancock, but Eddie Winter can’t be allowed to take the ‘Wealth again. He’s a monster, and if he’s gunning for Nora, then we have every reason to end this quick,” Nick says and she can feel him moving up beside them. He takes off his hat and sets it on her head. She peers at him from under the rim and he grins. It’s gentle and tender and her heart hurts just looking at him, looking at them. 

Nick reaches for Hancock and he comes, steps between them and sets his arms around them. Nick’s free arm goes around her too, his hand a firm weight at the small of her back. She feels those fingers on her skin. Kneading and pulling and sliding so surely against her. It’s a beautiful memory. She wonders, that terror swelling again, if it might be their last.

“We won’t be gone long and we’ll check in at every settlement along the way.” 

Hancock’s voice is rough as he replies, though there’s the hint of a smile at the edges of his lipless mouth. “You’d better. I can’t be chasing you two around the Commonwealth, you know.”

The smile he gets from Nick makes her heart skip. 

“You would, though,” Nick says quietly before ducking his head and kissing Hancock gently, but firmly. Desire curls up from her stomach at the sight of it and she promises herself, right then and there, that they’ll take a vacation when this is done. Just the three of them. To some forgotten place in the Commonwealth where they can just be without having to worry about Eddie Winter or the looming target of The Institute, something she can’t even be bothered to consider right now. Not with Winter taking out her settlements. 

“Just be careful, alright? No running here on the verge of death or some shit like that. I need you whole when you come back,” Hancock says, his eyes alight with the force of his own smile. 

“We always are,” Nick says, softly, like maybe he’s reassuring himself too. 

He taps Hancock’s chin and gives her a tight squeeze before he turns to leave, snagging his hat back off her head. He winks at her as he puts it in place. 

“I’ll start packing up,” he says and then he’s gone. Leaving the two of them alone for the first time since Goodneighbor. 

She cranes her neck back to take him in and finds that he’s already watching her. And suddenly, it’s like they’re back in the State House, right on the precipice of something that she can’t name. Her pulse trips inside her chest, tapping out a rapid tempo against her ribcage. Her lungs falling and rising on a hill that doesn’t quite crest. The room is spinning. She curls her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching for him. 

“I just realized we haven’t had a moment together since Goodneighbor. Since Eddie Winter fucked everything up,” he says and she can see the tick in his jaw at the mention of Winter. She knows how hard it was for him to walk away from his people after that. She knows what he’s given up to be here, and here she is leaving him. 

“Yeah,” she says, feeling the words snagging on her teeth. There’s not much more to say. There’s everything more to say. But she can’t quite bridge that gap. Not with him looking at her like that. Not with her heart racing like it is. 

Hancock smiles and there’s a knowing glint in his eyes. Like he could possibly figure out what she’s thinking. Like maybe it’s the same thing that’s on his mind. It’s then that she finds the courage to go on, to say to him what she’s been wanting to say for a long time. 

“There’s a lot of things we haven’t talked about - Goodneighbor, Winter, the Institute,” she says. She pauses for a moment, the fell swoop in her stomach close to nausea, “Us and Nick. It all happened so fast. But I promise you we will get through this. We will. I didn’t go through everything I did just to fail now.”

“It has been fast,” Hancock agrees and then he _finally_ steps into her space and places a hand on her own, easing her fingers and easing the thundering of her heart. “But it’s good you know? It’s - it’s been weird remembering things about us from before. It’s weird to know that I loved you before and I love you now and it’s almost the same thing, but not.” 

He laughs at himself, his hand going up to rub at the back of his neck. She wonders if he knows what he just said, if he knows that he’s broken her, brought her low with just a few words. 

“It doesn’t make sense, any of this, but I’m glad I have you. And Nick. The two of us have been dancing around each other for years, but we never had any courage between us until you showed up,” he goes on, his smile bordering on self-deprecation. She hates that smile, hates that he doubts himself. Hates that he can’t see himself the way she does. The way Nick does. 

She leans up on her toes and pecks the corner of his mouth, watching his lips tuck up into a real grin. 

“You always were a talker,” she says, laughing when he swoops down for a real kiss. The laughter dies in her throat when he gently probes her lips with his tongue, seeking entrance. She opens for him and swallows the moan as desire swells in her stomach. She grips him by the lapels of his coat. The fabric is rough and sweat-stained. She loves how it feels beneath her fingers. A relic reborn when he decided to change his name and change his fate. 

They kiss for a long time. Minutes, hours, she’s not sure. He pulls away, his forehead resting against her own. Her lips are swollen and her head is spinning. Her breath is ragged, snarling on the edges of her lungs. 

“Promise me you’ll come back,” Hancock says then, words so quiet she has to strain to hear them. Her heart skips and her fingers tighten on him, her nerves on fire. 

“I will. I promise,” she says, and she feels that promise like a brand on her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a long ass time since I last posted, but I hope this was well worth it. No action quite yet, but we did have a few cool moments. I've been wanting to use Preston and Sturges in this story for a long time, so I'm glad I was finally able to do that. And I love Mama Murphy, of course, and she's a major part of this story too, so it was nice to include her even if only for a short while. AND THEN OF COURSE THE NORA/HANCOCK KISS. Do you know we haven't seen them kiss since the first arc of this story? I was really shocked when I realized that and I know this wasn't anything super blown out, but we'll get to that. I promise you all the sex is coming, just not quite yet. :)
> 
> And then as far as personal stuff, my wisdom teeth procedure went great. The only thing is I've still got some weird nerve damage stuff happening, but hopefully that'll work itself out. I did a lot of sleeping and a lot of eating mashed potatoes. When I finally got to eat real food, it was so wonderful lol. Also I started school back up, but I'm hoping that this semester won't be so bad. I should be able to keep posting on the regular. So yeah that's it. I'd love to know what you guys think of this chapter. Love you all!


	20. End is Nigh

He watches them go. He watches and it’s so fucking cliche, but his heart goes with them. He presses it to her cheek, to Nick’s cold metal hand tucked between his overheated fingers, and to their lips for one last goodbye. 

_Come back to me. Please come back._

And they both smile at him, sad and twisted though the expressions are, and he realizes that they know. They know. But they go anyway. They swing their bags over their shoulders and they start making their way east, their silhouettes growing hazy in the late morning sun until they disappear. 

It takes everything in him not to go after them, not to take off running and never look back. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. Harder than pushing himself to stand beside his mother’s grave. Harder than abandoning Nick because of his own ignorance and misplaced sense of duty to his good-for-nothing father. Harder even than pretending that Nora was nothing to him but a curiosity back before he’d met the right Nora. The one that knew him too. 

He made a promise, though, and he’s a lot of things, but he’d never break a promise to them. Never them. So he watches them go and he wonders just what the fuck he’s supposed to do here while they’re gone.

“Fate’s a twisted thing, isn’t it?” someone says at his elbow and he flinches, as if he’s been struck, at the way it raises his hackles. Sends ice sliding down his back. He turns his head to take in Mama Murphy, the strange older woman that had gripped Nora’s hand and told her it would be okay to rehash her past one last time. 

“Didn’t you ever learn not to sneak up on people like that?” he snaps, irritated that an old lady had gotten the upper hand on him. Irritated that his heart is now hammering, his thoughts running circles inside of his skull. As if he didn’t have enough to think about, enough to worry about. 

To make things worse, Mama Murphy grins. It crawls across her face, a slow unfurling smile that catches and pulls at the corners of her eyes. 

“I’ve faced off worse than you, John McDonough,” she says and the smile is softer now, worn at the edges like rounded glass. It’s familiar, not unlike the flashes of deja vu that he gets whenever Nora is around. Like he’s been here before. Looking down at that slow curling smile with his stomach dropping out of him. And that name. He hasn’t heard it in so long, it almost doesn’t feel like his own anymore. Almost. 

“It’s actually Hancock, now,” he says,=. He tries to keep his voice light, nonchalant, because it won’t do to piss this woman off. Because it won’t do to let his fear and anger get the better of him. He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “What can I do for you?”

Mama Murphy stares at him for a moment, those blue gray eyes staring into him, through him, before sliding past him as if she might still be able to see Nora and Nick out there. Stark black figures moving over the edge of the world. 

“Just wanted to introduce myself,” she says, her eyes still looking out over the horizon. “You could use a friend here. Most of these people don’t know you and the ones that do only know you by reputation.”

He very nearly laughs. A friend. As if he could ever in a million years be friends with someone like Mama Murphy. But then, crazier things have happened and in this world, the one that Nora built with her own two hands, anything is possible. And she’d left him in charge. Not Garvey. Not Mama Murphy. Hancock. Because she trusted him. Because she believed in him. 

And wasn’t that just a kick in the gut?

“Right,” he says, and the last of his anger and fear fades away. He smiles and holds his hand out to her. “Well maybe together we can keep this place running.” 

She grins and the corners of her eyes grow deep. 

“Maybe, Mr. Hancock. Maybe.”

***

It’d been three days. Three days since they’d left Sanctuary. Three days of wandering between the settlements. Three days of nothing. 

Nora reaches up to adjust the straps of her pack. It’s starting to drag now, loaded down with junk from all their traveling. And as she lowers her hands, she realizes they’re shaking. There’s something hard and low in her stomach, just resting there. A bad feeling that she can’t shake. That or she’s hungry.

She raises her hand for the cigarette they’ve been passing back and forth. In the old days, before the war, she never would have imagined smoking. It’d always been more Nate’s thing. But now, tugging it from Nick, his metal fingers slipping over her own, she can’t help but see the appeal. She fits her lips over the filter and takes a long draw. It burns all the way down into her lungs. She holds it there, focuses on the way her tongue tingles and the tight heat inside her chest. When she finally breathes out, she feels calmer. Less on edge. 

“You okay?” Nick asks as he takes the cigarette back from her. She glances to the side and smiles at him. Tries to anyway. She can feel it catching at the corner of her mouth. It feels more wan than she’d intended. He smiles indulgently, his yellow eyes glowing like embers in the darkness. 

So she shrugs because she knows she can’t lie to him now. 

“Not really. I’m fucking tired of this. Three days and we haven’t found anything.”

“Maybe we’re not as good at this as we think we are,” Nick quips, surprising a laugh out of her at the quick retort. Now she’s truly smiling, and she can see the pleasure in his eyes at the accomplishment. She turns her head, flushing red and warm all over. 

They pass the next few minutes in silence. And as the heat fades from her skin, she realizes that they’re standing close. Close enough for her to reach for his hand, if she dares. It’s so juvenile, such a simple thing to get flustered over, but it makes her hot all over again with just the thought. She doesn’t reach for him. It’d be impractical, stupid even, to walk hand in hand like that out here. When someone could get the jump on them at any moment. It’s not that she’s scared. It’s not that her nerves are on fire and her skin is pricking with his nearness. No, not that. 

“You know,” Nick says, shaking her from her thoughts. She turns to look at him and finds him already watching her. “Maybe there’s nothing to find. Maybe they all wandered off somewhere and just didn’t come back? Maybe they got picked off by Raiders?”

“That’s wishful thinking,” she says with a dry chuckle, knowing in her heart that can’t be it. There’s something on the horizon, she can feel it. 

“Maybe,” he says, looking out ahead of them again. And this time she doesn’t hesitate to reach for his hand. He flinches under the sudden press of her fingers and she has to tighten her grip to keep a hold of him. 

“Hey,” she says, soft and gentle. He breathes and the sudden tightness in his eyes fades. “Whatever this is, we’re gonna figure it out and we’re going to get Winter. We did it once. We can do it again.” 

“I know,” he says, nodding. “It’s different this time though. He _knows_ and he’s made it clear that he’s not going to stop until he kills one or the both of us.” 

At that, her heart jumps in her chest. She knows that, of course she does, but they hadn’t really talked about it before now. 

She opens her mouth to say something, what she isn’t sure, when a high-pitched whistling fills the air and her stomach drops out of her. She’s heard that sound before. Has thrown a few of them herself. 

It’s the sound of a mini nuke dropping right on top of where she’d guess Country Crossing is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well it's been over a month since I last updated, so that's depressing. I'm really sorry about that. Between school starting up again and my going to visit my mom and little sister literally every single weekend for the past month, well there hasn't been a whole lot of time for writing. But I finally crunched this out and am almost done with the next chapter too. So just bear with me guys! I promise it'll be out by this coming weekend. 
> 
> Also if you can't tell, I love Mama Murphy and I love the fact that she likes to mess with Nick and Hancock. It's hilarious and also makes my muse happy, so she's going to keep doing that probably. :)


	21. Witching Hour

Before he can move or think or say anything, Nora takes off running. She reaches for her gun and he can see her silhouette thrown into stark relief against the bright white impact of the mini nuke over the hill in front of them before she disappears down the other side. 

“Nora, wait,” he roars in terror as he tears off after her. Even this far out, he can feel the buzz of radiation in the air from the explosion and as he crests the hill, he feels his mouth go dry and his motor tick, tick, ticking to a grinding halt before revving up again. There are super mutants and Raiders flooding over the plain towards Country Crossing. Or the ruined remains of it. 

Nora’d built Country Crossing from the ground up. She’d placed water purifiers inside the small lake next to the wrecked building on the far side of the settlement to give them all fresh water. She’d built a three-story house on the property too, complete with individual bedrooms for everyone. It had taken her a while, but seeing the look on the settlers faces as she’d given them the tour had been well worth it. 

The settlers themselves had also improved the mutfruit garden they’d planted, adding tatoes and carrots and even corn to the assortment of plants they could grow. It’d been a promising settlement, one of her favorites. And even with the nuclear power station and the National Guard training yard so close by, she’d made it into a safe haven for these people. The two original settlers had grown to nine as an older couple, a mercenary turned farmer, and a small family of four had moved in. 

Now it is a burnt-out husk of the thriving settlement it had been. The houses were blown to bits, glass and clothes and wood scattered around the settlement and littering the ground. What remained of them was on fire, the flames roaring and throwing shadows across the landscape. And then there were the bodies. One or two of them whole and mostly untouched but for the radiation that had burnt their skin. Every inch of them that wasn’t covered in clothing was red and blistered and bleeding. It turned his stomach to look, but he looked anyway. He owed it to these people to remember what had happened here. There wasn’t as much blood as he thought there would be, but then he supposes the explosion might have turned the others into a fine red mist. 

What a fucking waste.

And amongst all of it, there is Nora. Her eyes alight with rage and her lips pulled back from her teeth as she screams. She swings her pistol around, cutting down anything that moves, Raider and Super Mutant alike. She is beautiful and terrible and he fears what might happen when they run out of bullets. Still, he thinks as he darts towards her side, avoiding the blood and viscera coating the ground, and starts taking shots, they would stay as long as they could. 

They manage for a while. They’re spread out for the most part and without much tactical sense to their formations. They pick them off by ones and twos and threes, but after a while, the groups get larger and larger and he can feel Nora tiring beside him. Not to mention that old injury on his left hand is flaring up, making his metal fingers freeze up and hard to move. He’s not a fool. He can see that the end is nigh for the two of them. 

“Nora,” he says, over the dying throes of a particularly nasty looking Mutant with his kneecap mangled by Nora’s point-blank shot. “We can’t keep this up. We have to go.”

“I can’t, Nick,” she says, not looking at him. She takes down a Raider, part of his head bursting apart in a flood of red brain matter that the Raider behind him just runs through, coating her and adding to the maniacal, crazy grin flashing across her face. “They have to pay. I can’t just leave this.” 

He raises his gun to take his shot at the crazy Raider and his fingers tense, throwing the shot too wide. She keeps coming, her boots sinking deep into the ruined earth near the pond, coating her with mud and God knew what else. Nora takes the shot. The Raider takes another step, her eyes now comically wide and the grin fading slowly away, before her legs catch in the mud and she falls over, half submerged in the water. 

“Nora,” he tries again, this time stepping closer to her and grabbing the side of her face to make her look at him. He’s struck by the haunted look in her eyes. There’s anger there, oh yes, but there’s fear too and grief in equal measure. “Nora, we can’t fight if we’re dead.” Her lip trembles for a moment and he thinks she might keep fighting him, but then her shoulders sag and he knows he’s reached her. 

“Okay,” she says, “Let’s go.” 

And then they run. He gives her a bit of a head start to shoot down one last Raider coming at them. He shoots it right in the side of the neck. Blood sprays out and it falls to the ground next to one of the other Raiders. Its death throes are warped and wet, but he’s made sure it won’t get up again. Not from that. With that, he pivots on his heel and takes back off over the hill. 

“Nora, I-,” he begins as he crests the hill and stops immediately at the sight before him. It’s him. Eddie Winter. And he’s got Nora held between two of his goons with a smile on his face a mile long. The bastard. 

“Nicky,” Winter says in greeting, that distinct accent setting him on fire. “Was wondering when you were gonna join us.” Nick doesn’t look at Nora. Can’t, or he’ll break right there and then. And for this, he needs to be strong. 

“Well, here I am,” he says dryly. Winter chuckles and it’s obvious there’s no humor in it. “What the hell are you doing, Winter?”

“I’d think it was pretty obvious. I’m taking your girl, Nicky. I set my trap and you two fell for it just like I knew you would. And now, I’m going to take everything you love, Valentine. Just like I did before.”

A chill runs through him and his motor revs up in response, but it’s Nora who speaks next, before he can figure out what he wants to say. 

“It won’t be just like last time, Winter. You’re not the only one with power here. The Minutemen will come if I ask them to.” 

At that, Eddie turns and walks back over to her. He stands to the side of her for show, so Nick can see everything that he does. He grabs her chin, forcing her to look at him, look at the feral smile unfurling on his face and the glint of his red eyes in the dark. 

“You’re right, sweetheart,” he says. It’s soft and crooning like he’d talk to a lover. “It won’t be just like last time. Because now, I don’t have to hold back.” He strokes her cheek, the touch full of suggestion. His stomach turns and he has to curl his hands into fists to stop himself from going at him. Not here. Not yet, he tells himself. There are maybe fifty guys he has assembled around. The two that are holding Nora aren’t the biggest there by any means, but they’re big enough to give that idiot Paladin Danse a run for his money. And the rest of them are about the same size and all outfitted with bulletproof armor and assault rifles. There’s no way he’d make it out alive, no way he’d be able to bust Nora out of this. 

Winter turns around. Doesn’t step out of Nora’s space, just turns so that he’s forced to look at them both. Of course his eyes dip lower over Winter’s shoulder until he’s looking into her eyes. She’s much calmer than he’d expected her to be, her eyes like two twin coals in the night and her jaw set in a grimace. It’s at odds with the lurchy, jittery feelings trapped in his own chest. She doesn’t look at him. Not until Winter signals two more of his guys to move forward, right towards him. They’re both grinning and he almost takes a step back as their wide eyes and bright teeth loom up at him. But he doesn’t. Won’t give them or Winter the satisfaction. 

Across the way, that fire in Nora’s eyes winks out as she finally meets his gaze. And it’s so much worse than he imagined. There’s a quiet moment where he can hear the shuffle of the two goons making their way towards him and the crackle of flames at his back and the lone howl of a mutated dog in the distance. A quiet moment where her face is completely devoid of emotion, like a slate wiped clean and he wonders if she’s finally broken beneath the weight of this night, beneath all that fear and anger and sorrow. But the moment passes as their arms close around him and force him to his knees and it’s enough. Fissures chasing webbed splinters across her expression. 

“Let him go you sick fuck,” she screams as she lurches toward Winter. She drags the two goons forward a step before they tighten their grip on her again. Winter doesn’t move, doesn’t acknowledge her at all. Just keeps staring down at Nick like he’s a bug he’d like to squash under his boot.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen, Nicky,” Winter says now and his grin stretches further as he takes a step toward him kneeling in the dirt at his feet. God is he enjoying this. “I’m gonna take your girl. And me and my boys are gonna have some fun with her.”

“Like Hell you are, you son of a bitch,” Nick says and tries to lunge at him. Even on his knees, even restrained by the two meat heads on either side of him, he manages to drag himself and them forward a few paces. He’s shaking, his metal joints creaking under the force of his rage. Winter just smiles wider, his red eyes glowing with mirth. 

“I am,” he says, and this time, he kneels down to Nick’s level so he can look into those eyes when he seals his fate. “You’ll see when you come looking for her and I’ll let you stew in your own misery for a while before I kill her and then I kill you and that boy toy of yours too and everyone else you bring through my front doors.” 

“When we come for you, the only one dying is you,” Nick says through his teeth. Winter just nods, a fire in his eyes that freezes him to the core. 

“We’ll see, Nicky,” he says as he pushes himself to his feet. Winter looms over him, an ambiguous little smile curling over his mouth. “We’ll see.”

Then he moves and it’s too late before Nick realizes what he’s going to do. The gun flashes in the dark and he hears the crack of the shot ringing in his ears. He’s let go as coolant and oil run out of the side of his chest, off enough to have missed anything important, but just enough to send him reeling backward onto the ground. 

“No!” he hears Nora scream. “Nick!”

He shuts his eyes, feeling the life force draining out of his chest. The words are in his mouth, so close to the surface, but he can’t quite speak.

 _It’s okay,_ he wants to say. 

_I’ll find you._

The effort is too much and as the darkness swallows him up in its hungry jaws, he hears Winter laughing as Nora is dragged away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo yeah.... I've been planning this for a long, long time. Basically since I decided that Winter was going to be a major player in this second part of the series. I still can't believe that this is a series at all. I've been writing this thing for a year you guys. A WHOLE YEAR!!! I never thought I'd say that. 
> 
> But anyways, back to the story, I wanted to let you guys know a few things. The next few chapters (not sure how many yet) will be filled with some triggering stuff. I went ahead and added some more tags to the fic to cover myself, including psychological torture and psychological horror. My headcanon of Eddie Winter is that he's not only a killer and all around bad guy, he's also kind of a sadist and gets off on mental abuse as well as the physical things i.e. in reference to him threatening people's families because they don't meet his expectations to a T. That kind of stuff. I'm also going be delving a bit into some drug addiction and non-consensual drug use, so if any of that is triggering for you in any way, please don't read it. I'll try not to be too brutally explicit with it, but I'll make sure to put trigger warnings and such on each chapter that includes it so you'll know. And if you guys are triggered by that and would like me to include a synopsis for each chapter in the end notes, just let me know. And as far as rape, I will not be delving into that. This is not that type of story. So, no worries in regards to that. 
> 
> I think that's about it. Not sure when the next chapter will be out, but I've started on it, so never fear. :) As you can see, I'm trying to be less spotty about updating. Thank you guys so much for the continued support. I love each and every one of you!!


	22. Odds Stacked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only warning for this one is nonconsensual drug use.

Nick wakes up suddenly, his golden eyes thrown wide and panicked and his servos whirring angrily inside of his chest. For a moment, he doesn’t know why he’s so worried, why his chest is wound up so tight. For a single moment, everything is okay. Then he remembers. He remembers being shot in the chest. He remembers Eddie Winter’s laughter as he drifted away. Worst of all, he remembers Nora’s screams. He closes his eyes again as that tightness in his chest twists into something unnameable, in horror. Eddie Winter has her and he has no idea where they are or how they’ll get her back. 

“Is this thing on?” Hancock’s voice fills the air. He jerks, his eyes opening again, and his mouth falling open in relief and despair in equal measure. Until he realizes that Hancock isn’t really there. It’s just his voice. Coming out of Nora’s pip boy next to him. It’s covered in dirt and blood and he tries not to think about any of that before he picks it up. 

He has to fiddle with it for a second before he accesses the radio frequencies. He chooses the one for Sanctuary with stiff fingers and then -

“Hancock?” he says into the radio. 

“For fuck’s sake, Nicky, I’ve been trying you guys all morning. Nora told me you’d check in last night and I got worried when you didn’t,” there’s a pause and Nick’s throat closes up. How is he supposed to break the news? How is he supposed to tell Hancock that he lost her? “Did you guys make it to Country Crossing?”

“I, uh,” Nick begins, his voice cracking. He takes a minute to unscrew his throat, to steady himself. “We made it there alright.”

“Okay, that’s good right?”

“Yes and no.” Another pause. This one pregnant and uncomfortable.

“What’s that supposed to mean, Nick?” Hancock says, anger bleeding into his voice. Nick suddenly wishes he were here. Even angry, even angry at him would be better than being alone out here with this knowledge. 

“Winter was waiting for us, John. He set off a mini nuke, blew everyone to Hell to lure us in. There were Muties and Raiders and we killed most of them before we got overrun and I told her we needed to leave. She started off while I picked off a few more and when I went to join her, he had her. Fucking strung up between two of his guys. There were maybe 50 of them there, all armed to the teeth. Winter ran his mouth and then shot me in the chest and left with her. Must have taken off her pip boy too so we couldn’t track her.”

“That fucking prick,” Hancock says and Nick can imagine the seething fury in his face as clearly as if he was standing right in front of him. This is what he needed, he realizes, he needed this anger. All he can feel is fear, but anger is better. Anger gets things done. “I knew I should have gone with you.”

“There was nothing you could have done, John. There were too many of them.”

A pause in which Hancock just breathes into the mic of the radio, breathes and rails against this news on the other end of the frequency and he hates that he had to be the one to tell him. Hates that this happened at all. 

“What are we gonna do, Nicky?” John says. Now here is the fear. Now here is the horror that’s been dogging him since he woke up. It’s like his heart is still inside his chest, squeezing and tightening around the absence of John and Nora.

“We have to get her back,” he says. That’s all there is to it.

***

She wakes in pieces. Everything is so slow. Slipping and sliding and starburst-bright as liquid mercury behind her eyelids. For a moment, it’s quiet. And then the sound swells, pressing against her ears and nearly making her cry out from the pain of it. Everything hurts, but it’s a slow hurt. A throbbing thing behind her heart and inside her throat. It’s the beat of her pulse, she realizes. Thump, thumping in her chest and whispering a name. 

_Nick._

_Nick._

_Nick._

She breathes, but it’s all wrong. It’s too fast. Pressing and pressing and pressing her down, down into the pain again. The light slips away. There is only darkness now. Darkness and pain and that aching slowness. 

She sleeps and she does not dream. 

***

This time, she opens her eyes as she is wrenched to her feet. There are hands on her. Fingers gripping fast and she has a moment of consuming terror as her mind tries to catch up, thoughts caught in the fog and the pain from before, arms swinging blindly. There is no pain now as she throws her fists out. But the ghost of it lingers, pressing its cold fingers against the crook of her arm. She connects with something that gives a grunt of pain or surprise or both.

“Wake the fuck up, bitch,” a voice says before she is slapped across the face. And that, that is just what she needed. The bones of her neck crack with the force of the hit, her jaw snapping shut and her eyes stinging with sudden tears. 

She comes to. Really comes to, as the sights and sounds around her finally register, and she wishes she hadn’t. She wishes she was still asleep. 

“Oh God,” she mutters, and the voice is not hers. Hoarse and grating against her throat. Like she hasn’t spoken in days, but that can’t be right. 

Kneeling around her on the gray tiles are her missing settlers. Not all of them, but enough, and she nearly wrenches herself from the Raider that has his hands on her until she realizes just how helpless it all is. They aren’t kneeling. They’re cowering, the children huddled against the adults and all of them with eyes wide and staring intent upon the ground. Her heart lurches when he starts to drag her away. They’re not even chained up. 

“No, please, please!” She pleads and begs and it’s not enough. She watches them until she can’t anymore. 

John, Seth, Lizzie, Gabe, Allisa, Nathan, Ellen, even Elliott. None of them look up at her as she’s dragged away. The Raider forces her feet forward, his hand gripping tight enough to bruise her arm. He swears as she trips over the threshold into the next room. 

“And there she is,” says a voice that turns her blood to ice. She lifts her eyes. It takes all of her energy to do it, but she does, and somehow, this is worse. Seeing him is worse than not. At least then she could pretend he wasn’t really there. She could pretend that none of this had happened. “General Nora Hayes. The great protector of the Commonwealth.” The Raider throws her to the floor. She kneels on the warped and stained tile at his feet and wishes she’d died with Nick outside of Country Crossing. She wishes that she’d thrown herself in front of that bullet and just died. She’s tired. So fucking tired. 

“Not feeling talkative today are we?” Winter says, the mirth in his voice enough to turn her stomach. “That’s alright. Perhaps tomorrow?” 

Her mood shifts so fast that it leaves her head spinning as she looks up at him, fire in her eyes. He’s smiling. God, she wishes she could rip it from his face and shove it down his throat. Suffocate him like he’s suffocating her. It’d be nothing less than he deserves. 

“I won’t be talking to you tomorrow or any day after, you bastard.”

But instead of wiping the smug grin from his face, it just settles more fully there, the corners of his mouth turning impossibly high and his red eyes blazing like two coals caught in his pockmarked skin. 

Winter stands and nods at his man still standing just behind and to the right of her. She feels the brush of his boots against her leg as he moves next to her and lifts her up. She comes face to face with the ghoul. He’s not grinning now, but there’s a quieter smile on his lips, making her heart race and her lungs constrict. He reaches for her and brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear. 

“Don’t you understand, doll? It doesn’t matter what you do. You’re mine and even if that waste of space junkie comes for you, I’ll cut him down just like I did Nick.” 

And God, but she knows he’s right. She can see the truth in his smile and his eyes, can feel it in the pit of her soul. She won’t survive it. She won’t. But she can’t let him know that. She schools her features and lifts her chin, letting some of her old life bleed into her. Letting that litigator’s confidence and ease flood through her until she can look him in the eyes. She unfurls her own smile and she’s pleased to see the furrowing of his brows and the ugly turn of his lips. 

“The only way John would come here is if he knew he could win,” she says. “Your days are numbered, Eddie.” 

He stares her down and for a brief moment, she wonders if maybe he’ll hit her. He looks ready to, his hands curled into fists and his lips pulled back and baring his teeth to her. They’re surprisingly white. But he doesn’t hit her. Doesn’t say anything more to her. Just nods to the Raider who promptly starts dragging her away. 

The goon laughs, all sly and slick as oil in her ear. 

“You’ve done it, General,” he says and the title feels less like honor and more like a sick, twisted joke coming from him. “The thing you should learn about old Winter is that he fucking hates you. Best not to piss him off even more. Although, it should make for excellent entertainment from our end.”

“What are you talking about?” she says between gritted teeth. He laughs that same laugh and it’s like it’s inside her, wriggling its way down her spine, a drop of ink in the well of her soul. She feels dirtier for it, like she’s been tainted. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he says and then promptly stops in front of one of the rooms lining the hallway. There are six of them, all with crude numbers painted on the face of the door in blue ink. They stand stark against the solid black medal. He stopped in front of number six.

He opens the door and shoves her inside. She lands on her knees and her joints protest at the cold, biting metal digging into them. He follows her in, crowding the doorway, and that blinding terror from before rears back. She falls onto her back side, her arms stretched out before her to fend him off. Whatever he’s going to do, it isn’t good. He grins, gaining on her fast. It happens so fast she doesn’t realize what he’s done until he pulls away again, retreating back out into the hallway. He’d stuck her with something, what she doesn’t know. Now the strange ache in the crook of her elbow makes sense. They’d been injecting her since she got here.

“See you in a week, General,” he says, then slams the door closed behind her. She hears some sort of locking mechanism engage and a quiet coil of dread rises up from the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t know what this room is, but she has a very bad feeling about it. 

She rises to her feet, her knees aching already from the impact. There’s just enough light for her to see her way to a wall. She doesn’t know how long she has before whatever the Raider gave her kicks in. So she follows the wall all the way to a corner. There’s nothing on the walls, no furniture that she bumps into. It’s empty. She walks the next wall and finds the same. It’s on her third wall, the one just to the right of the door, that she finds something. Her fingers touch glass and she recoils just as a light beyond it kicks on. 

The glass is really a window. It’s a floor to ceiling glass window looking into the next room over, number five. The room is equally as devoid of furnishings and there, huddled in the corner, is a person. They’re hunched over, their knees pulled to their chest and their head tucked within the circle of their arms. She watches them for a moment and black encroaches on the edge of her vision. For a moment, she thinks maybe the light is going off again. She places a hand on the glass, just watching. Then, her legs begin to give out. She falls to a knee, crying out. What the fuck did he give her?

She has just enough awareness, before she falls, that the figure is stirring. But before she can see who or what the figure is, the darkness fills her vision and she collapses to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOOOOO.......it's been a while, needless to say lol. I had a lot going on in November, what with NANOWRIMO (which I completely failed. I was behind basically the whole month and then gave up on it right after Thanksgiving, so that's mainly why I haven't been around). Plus school and obviously the holidays, it made for a really busy time, but I am back and ready to keep on with this fic. 
> 
> I'm so incredibly happy with the response so far from you guys about the direction this fic is headed. As promised, every chapter containing anything that might be triggering will include a note in the beginning notes detailing what all is included in the chapter without giving too much away. I'm really excited for this darker turn of events and I hope you guys are too. 
> 
> Also another note, you can always contact me on [tumblr](http://ohhvax.tumblr.com) at any time. I'm not around as much as I was a few years ago, but I still get on every so often, so it'd be great to see what you guys are doing too. :)
> 
> I can't wait to hear from everyone! <3 <3 <3


	23. Haunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this chapter.

Darkness. So much darkness. Impenetrable and thick as molasses, dragging and dragging down. There is no way but down. There is no way but through. 

Here, there is no time. There is no space. More importantly, there is no death. There is no life. And for those brief few moments between, there is no Nora. She isn’t a failed mother. She isn’t the General of the Minutemen. She is not a leader or a lover or steeped in grief. She just is and for those moments, that is perfect. 

***

The darkness is still there, but there are other things now. Voices. Hands. And white hot blistering pain. Every nerve alight. Her body is a ruin, all wrapped around her core, trying to hold it all inside. 

The voices fade in and out. The hands disappear and reappear, each touch more shaky than the last. There is moisture on her face, running from her eyes and nose and into her mouth. 

She sleeps. 

Only then relief. 

***

She counts time by heartbeats. Too fast. By breaths Too shallow. 

She tries not to think in that empty swell of black. Tries not to wonder what John is doing. If he knows. If he’s out there somewhere wondering too. She doesn’t know which is worse. That he doesn’t know what’s happened yet or that he does. Still, the thoughts come. They swirl heavy and red inside of her mind. 

Nick smiling at her from beneath the rim of his detectives hat. His cigarette plucked from her fingers. Cold metal soothing the sudden heat of her fingers. His hand on the small of her back, pressing and pressing through her, into her. His mouth and her tears. The crack of a gunshot. His chest blown open while oil and God knew what else flowing and staining the ground around him.

She is so cold and there is so much pain, but she cannot sleep. Not anymore. It feels like every waking moment is a lesson in torture. Every nerve is screaming. Every muscle crying out for more. 

_More what,_ she thinks.

More what indeed.

***

She opens her eyes. She only has a moment to look at the dark ceiling before she feels the sharp swell of bile rising up from her stomach. Her mouth fills with saliva and she only has enough time to lurch to the side. She throws up nothing but acid. She can’t even remember the last time she ate. It must have been before - she cuts off the thought before it is nothing but a heavy, dark echo inside her head. 

“Are you okay?” a small, thin voice asks. She flinches, squeezing her eyes shut, and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The figure in the next room was a fucking kid. Leave it to Eddie Winter to pull this kind of shit. 

“I’m fine,” she finds herself saying. Though she’s the farthest from it than she’s been in a long time. Her voice is hoarse from disuse. Her vocal cords strain as she uses them for the first time in what must have been days. “How long have I been here?” 

“A few days. Maybe five. It’s hard to tell,” the kid says and God but there’s something familiar about his voice. She turns to look over into his cell, but he’s still just a dark figure huddled against the far wall. She can’t distinguish any features and it hurts her eyes to try. 

Her mind does catch though. If she’s been here a few days, then this kid, whoever he is, he’s been there even longer. Those old pains, old instincts, rise bright and hot inside her chest. She knew Eddie Winter was a bad guy, had known it since Nick told her all those lifetimes ago about a man bent on destroying the world before everything had all gone to shit, but this was a new level of low. Winter isn't just bad, he is a monster. A festering wound in need of lancing. 

“He’s been here,” the boy says. When she looks up, he’s scooted a little closer. He’s no longer swathed in shadow, but she still can’t see his face. He’s cross legged on the floor, his hands folded in his lap and his head tilted to the side as he regards her. She wonders just how long it’s been seen he’s seen another human being that wasn’t one of their captors. 

“Winter?” she asks him, glancing around her cell and finding something dark placed near the door. She crawls over to it while she waits for his answer. She reaches for the object and nearly cries when her fingers touch something cool and wet. She snatches the cup off the ground and takes a sip, making sure not to overextend her dehydrated body. 

“Yeah, a few times. And one of his guys. I couldn’t see him very well, but I think it was the same one that put you in there,” he said. She nods, setting the cup down after a few sips. It isn’t much, but she does feel more like herself after that. 

“Any idea how long you’ve been here?” she says, scooting closer to the barrier between their rooms. Up close, she can see smudged handprints from the other side of the glass. Her heart wrenches when she realizes he’d been checking on her over the past few days. Probably to make sure she was still breathing. Across from her, the kid shrugs his shoulders. 

“A while,” he says, voice low. 

“Are you here alone? Where are your parents? The rest of your family?” she asks and immediately knows it’s the wrong thing to say. The kid’s head snaps up, back ramrod straight, his hands no longer folded in his lap, but curled into fists at his side. 

“I don’t have a family,” he says, moving away back to his spot in the corner of his room. “Not anymore.”

“Shit, kid, I’m so-,” she starts to stay, but he cuts her off before she can finish. 

“Don’t,” he says, sharp and too tough for a little boy like he is. There’s a strange burning behind her eyes and her fingers ache from digging into her pant legs. “Don’t say you’re sorry.” 

“Okay,” she says, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. God knew if she was ever getting out of here and if this kid was the only person she had a real connection with for the rest of her life, she couldn’t let things lay like this. 

“Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any mistakes. I just really wanted to get this one out to you guys. I'm excited for where the story is going and I hope you guys are too. Hopefully I'll be able to post more over the next few weeks with the holidays giving me some much needed time off from work and school. 
> 
> I love all of you so much and if I don't post again before New Year's, I wish you all the very best 2018! <3


	24. Chapter 24

A punch to the face is probably less than he deserves, honestly, and he can’t say he’s the least bit surprised when the first thing Preston Garvey does when he stumbles back into Sanctuary is take a swing at him. What does surprise him is Sturges stepping between the two of them to block the blow. 

Garvey’s eyes widen and he immediately drops his arms, but doesn’t let his fingers uncurl from the fists he’s got them twisted into. He still looks ready to fight, looks about ready to tear Sturges apart just to get to him. Nick is a heavy, warm, comforting presence just behind his shoulder. He has to resist the urge to reach for him, to take his hand. It had nearly killed him, having to wait for the old bot to make it back to Sanctuary on his own. A near thing, perhaps, but he had come back looking a little broken, but bent on getting their girl back. 

That was the thing he supposed. He and Nick were opposites in so many ways. He was impatient, reckless, where Nick was measured and unflappable. Nick was cool rage to the inferno trapped inside his own chest. He felt like he was lost in his grief, drowning, and he was so glad that Nick was here at least. 

“Let’s all take it easy,” Nick said now as he stepped up beside Hancock, placing a hand on his elbow that burned even through the layers of clothing between them. 

“You promised her. She trusted you,” Garvey said through his teeth. He was barely holding back, his words strained and full of so much anger. Preston had a penchant for composure, but this was an altogether different side of him they’d never seen before. 

“You saying this is our fault?” Hancock spat at him, conscious of Nick’s fingers on his elbow, conscious of the sweat gathering beneath his tricorn hat, conscious of the one man between his fists and Garvey’s face. Deserved or not, he won’t sit here and let Garvey question him, question Nick. After all they’d done, tried to do. 

“I’m saying this shouldn’t have happened. She should have left me in charge or taken more men or-.” 

“This isn’t her fault either,” Nick said, cutting the other man off. And there was the crack in his armor. The smallest glimpse of the righteous anger hiding beneath. “We’re all riled up, Preston, but this isn’t the time. If I know Winter, and I’d like to think I know him pretty well, he’s hoping for this. He wants us to get distracted, to be pissed off at each other so that we don’t start looking for her, but we can’t afford distraction, alright? We’ve got to find her as quickly as possible before he starts to get bored.” 

***  
This time, she wakes up strapped to something cold and made of metal. She wakes up and she can’t help looking around for that kid. Things had been easier, better between them since she’d almost stepped into something she couldn’t step out of. He’d stayed in his corner and she her own but she’d found herself telling him stories. About Nick and Hancock. About pre-war. About Mama Murphy and Dogmeat waiting for her back in Sanctuary. He didn’t tell any stories of his own and that was fine. Her guess was he didn’t have very many good stories to tell. But he would. She swore it. She’d sworn it.  


_“We’re gonna make it out of here, kid. One day you’ll meet all of these people and all of these places and start making memories of your own.”_

_“You think so?” And there’s a hesitancy there that she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been paying attention. One crack in his voice. A vulnerability that reveals just how young this kid is. There’s still hope left in him. There’s a small part of him that wants to believe. It breaks her heart and fills her with hope in equal measures._

_“Kid, I know so.”_

“Enjoying yourself?” a voice says from the corner of the room. She nearly jumps out of her own skin, the stories and the memory of that kid’s voice shoved down deep inside of her. As it is, when she tries to turn, lift her head, anything, she finds that her head is strapped down too with some thick leather band across her forehead. She strains against it, the bones and muscles in her shoulders, her neck, the lower half of her half aching and twisting beneath her skin. The band gives no quarter. She is helpless, unable to do anything but lay there, utterly and completely vulnerable. 

“Not particularly, no,” she says, giving up and relaxing back onto the cold metal surface. Every inch of her is aching. Every inch of her is on high alert. She’s been in here for at least three days and they’ve yet to do anything like this to her. Not that she wasn’t expecting it at some point. Still, there’s a tension in the air that she can’t see through. An anticipation and hunger that she wants to turn tail and run from. 

Winter chuckles darkly from his hidden corner of the room before she hears his footsteps. The sharp clack, clack, clack of his shoes against the tile floor echoes in her head.

“So much fire. I can see why Nicky loved you,” he says and she feels her stomach drop out of her. She’s been very, very careful not to think too long about him, about his metal body rotting away outside of Country Crossing, about Hancock finding him and having no idea what happened to her. She’s been so very careful. But this, his name pouring out of this monster’s mouth, it’s almost too much. It’s like needles on her skin pricking and prodding and poking through her crafted armor like it’s nothing. 

“Oh, does that bother you, princess? My saying his name?” Eddie says, his voice right next to her ear now. His breath is warm on the side of her face. He’s radiating warmth, blistering and white hot and just there. What she wouldn’t give to turn and face him. To swing at him, tear at his flesh. Make him hurt just as she is. 

He doesn’t need to know, though. He doesn’t deserve to know how much she loathes him. Because that, that would be giving him power. That would be playing right into what he wants. 

“Why now?” she asks him, her voice as cold and clear as a creek bathed in winter’s chill. The heat leaves for a moment and that fell swoop of her stomach tells her that she’s won. 

For a very long, tense, silent moment, he says nothing. 

“Because I’m a man of refined tastes,” Winter says and this time, he doesn’t tease her with the threat of his presence. This time, he looms over her. His face swims into focus and she flinches away from that leering, open smile and those red-tinted eyes. His eyes widen at that and his mouth stretches impossibly wide with barely restrained mirth.  


He reaches for her then. He brushes a stray lock out of her face, let’s that mottled skin brush against her face. And it breaks her heart to realize that if she just closed her eyes, she could pretend it was Hancock. His finger lingers on her chin before dipping to her throat. The rest of his hand joins it until he’s cupping her neck, cradling it in his palm. Winter stares down at her, that smile curling into something softer and infinitely more terrifying. 

“And I think I’ve left you to marinate for long enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da! I finally updated you guys and hey, it only took me two months. *flinch*
> 
> Anyway, if anyone is still hanging around waiting for this story to be updated, I definitely plan on finishing this thing. Shouldn't be too much longer now. Just between the holidays and now with school starting back up for me again, I haven't had a lot of free time on my hands. 
> 
> But here's to hoping you guys enjoy. I'd love to hear what you think! <3 <3


	25. The Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the nonconsensual drug use comes in. So, triggering ahead.

It’s okay for a time. Winter leaves, or at least he steps out of her line of sight. He’s brought his lackeys in, though. Nora listens to the rustle of their clothing and the hush of their voices. They’re trying very, very hard not to let her hear what they’re saying. And that’s okay too. She probably doesn’t want to know. 

Still, she can’t help but fear. She is tied down and completely at their mercy, at _his_ mercy, and if that isn’t enough to scare her, she doesn’t know what is. She remembers everything Nick ever told her about the man. 

“Leave us,” Winter says, suddenly, and she jolts out of her own thoughts. The leather binding her to the metal table groan and stretch with her movement and she thinks she hears some of his lackeys laughing at her as they file out. She doesn’t like it. Not one bit. 

There are a few moments between the room emptying and his face filling her vision again. She waits and her heart races. Her chest expands and falls too fast. Her wrists ache from the cold and the lack of circulation. She aches and she fears. She can do nothing but wait. 

Just when she thinks maybe he left too, she feels a pinch at the crook of her arm. And then he is looming over her. His face is so close, she nearly goes cross-eyed just looking up at him. He is smiling, but there is no joy in it. Or rather, it’s the wrong sort of joy. Everything about him is wrong. 

“I want you to feel every moment of this, Nora,” he says, grinning down at her with too many teeth. “And I want you to remember that the only one you have to blame for this is yourself. You should have left me alone. Nick should have left me alone. That’s why he’s dead.”

There is a rushing in her ears and in her head that won’t stop. Like the buzz of too many angry insects. She can’t escape it. Her pulse is in her throat. 

Then everything is wrong. The world is tilting. It is slipping and fading. There is laughter, but it is too close. Too heavy. Too loud. She closes her eyes, but it is wrong inside too. She is fading too, slipping into nothing.

There’s so much pain. Too much. She forgets herself. She loses herself in the pain, loses herself between. She can’t remember where she is, what she’s doing, who she is. She can’t. They ask and they ask and they ask, but she just can’t remember. 

It’s like trying to hold air, like trying to catch water between her fingers. As soon as she thinks she’s gotten hold of something solid, it slips away. 

And the worst part isn’t the forgetting. It isn’t that. The worst part is the moments of lucidity, the brief glimpses of the truth behind the fog. There is Winter and there are his lackeys. There is the frantic _beep, beep, beep_ of a familiar machine and the sharp, heavy hum of electricity in the air. And then there are the pricks and pokes and prods at the crook of her arm. It is aching and swollen and bruised. She can feel it. She doesn’t need to see. They are doing something to her, filling her with something that is changing everything, and there is nothing she can do. 

Every time she gets a little too aware, they do it again. Shoot her up and leave her there to stew in her own thoughts. A mix of memory and nightmare and dreams too woven together, too bright, to distinguish what is real, what was real, and what is a lie. 

She sees the kid and he is not cast in shadow here. It is too bright behind. He has dark hair and green eyes that are too much like her own and the touch of Nate’s smile around the corners of his mouth. She reaches for him and she thinks he calls out to her, but then he is gone. 

She sees Nick and he isn’t dead. He is so very alive and he is pulling her forward. He is lips and tongue and fingertips, trailing a path of fire down her spine. He is warm and his smile is enough to rock her to her core. God, but she’s missed him and she doesn’t know why. 

“I’ve been here the whole time, Nora,” he says, but his voice is wrong. Once she sees, she can’t unsee. His eyes are not the right shade of yellow. His hat is tilted a little too far forward or back. His tie is too perfectly knotted. He is Nick, but he is not. 

“Don’t do this, Nora,” he says and it is almost enough to break her. “Stay.”

She wanders, caught in her mind and caught in her heart. She is broken, fractured, and splintering. She is being ripped at the seams and there is not much left of her to piece back together. 

She remembers. Nick is dead. She wishes she were too.

When she finds Hancock, she is nearly spent. Her legs tremble beneath her, barely able to keep her weight, but he catches her just as she is about to fall. He catches her and swings her up into his arms like he’s a hero from one of those old fairy tales she used to read as a child. She smiles at him and he smiles back and it feels right. 

He walks with her for a while and then they are in that place again. The safe house that he kept just for himself, just in case. 

They’re barely in the door before he’s pressed her to the wall. His lips are warm and rough and so, so right. She moans and he chases the sound. He laughs against her mouth and it is enough. She warms beneath him, molding to his body and pulling him closer and then closer still. 

One of his hands is in her hair, angling her head just so. He is licking into her mouth, his tongue driving her mad while his other hand dips down her body. Trailing hot and white down to the juncture of her thighs. He doesn’t hesitate before he undoes her pants. Doesn’t hesitate before he reaches inside and plucks at her clit. It feels so good, but his hands are too rough. The texture is not quite right and that’s when she realizes. His tongue is not quite right either. His hand in her hair is gripping too hard, the strands caught on the unfamiliar skin. 

She jolts against him and their teeth clack together. He makes a sound, something between a groan and a hiss. He’s never made that sound before. Never. 

She pulls away from him. His hand slips from her and she almost cries for how much she doesn’t want to stop. But this isn’t him. It just isn’t. 

“Nora, please,” he says and she wants to break him just like he’s breaking her. She hates him and she doesn’t even know why. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. 

She curls up into a ball and tries to ignore him. He isn’t pleading now. He is screaming. He is angrier than she’s ever seen him before, all of it for her. 

Nora, he’d said. 

It sounds so familiar and there she is trying to trap air again, trying to catch what isn’t meant to be caught. She is grasping at straws. Nora? There is no Nora. Nora is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not expect to update so quickly, but I just started writing and could not stop myself. And just to clarify, I'm keeping the drug stuff pretty vague, mostly because I don't really know much beyond the basic research on Google. However, I have an idea that what they're using on Nora is some kind of hallucinogen and possibly some Jet. I'm taking some liberties here and I hope for the sake of the narrative, you guys can just bear with me on it. :)
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and I'm hoping to have the next chapter out soon! Let me know what you guys think! <3 <3


	26. Pitch

Nick can’t help but remember the last time he was here. Fire and ash and fallen bodies. Hancock’s blood and Winter’s grin, cutting and broken-edged and all for Nora. He can’t help but remember, but God, does he want to forget. 

Outside, Goodneighbor is still a wreck. That’s where Hancock is, trying to help where he can while he can. He’d been antsy and fired up since they left Sanctuary a week ago. Cleaning his shotgun, packing and repacking their bags during watch, catching Nick’s hand just because he could and giving it a tight squeeze. He’s glad John has something to do at least to get his mind off things while Nick handles this. 

“Nicky, you old dog,” someone says over his shoulder. He jumps, his hand flying immediately to Nora’s .44 holstered at his side. He groans as soon as he sees the pompadour wig and dark sunglasses. 

“Thought you’d have learned by now not to sneak up on people,” Nick says, grinning despite himself. He’d always liked Deacon. Even if he could be an ass. 

“Yeah well, you know me,” Deacon says, grinning too, and leaning against the wall by the stairs. 

“Isn’t it the point that I don’t?” Nick says, and the words are just shy of biting. To his credit, the other man doesn’t even flinch. Just crosses his arms and waits. 

Nick bites the inside of his one good cheek and twists his fingers in his coat. He has to get it together. For better or worse, Deacon is one of the best infiltrators the Commonwealth has and they need him to get Nora back. Three weeks is a long time for anyone, but for Winter, it’s an endless string of possibilities. He hasn’t thought too much on what could be happening to her and he doesn’t plan to start now, but the threat is always there at the back of his mind. 

He sighs and leans back in his chair. He’s so fucking tired of all of this. Running and planning and worrying. 

“Truth is, Deacon, I need your help.”

“Pray tell what you could possibly need my help with?” Deacon says. There’s something off about it. His mouth is a little too tight over the words. His wig, almost always perfectly coiffed, is a little tilted and Nick can see the peach fuzz of Deacon’s real scalp under the fluorescent lights. 

“Call it a hunch,” Nick says, then, his processors clicking inside his head, “But I think you know why I’m here.” 

Deacon nods thoughtfully. 

“Kind of need you to say it though, Nicky,” he says finally, “Much as I’d like to think the most of myself, I’m not a mind reader.” 

“We need your help finding Nora. She’s the General of the Minutemen and frankly your best way of finding your way into the Institute.”

“General of the Minutemen? She’s missing?” Deacon asks, and his voice is just a little too sharp, a little too barbed. He looks like he honestly didn’t know, a first if Nick’s ever seen one for the king of secrets. 

“Yeah, she is, and we need your help finding her.” 

“Yeah, of course. I need to get word to Des and the others, but they can spare me for a few days,” Deacon says. He can’t quite say why, but his alarms are ringing. There’s something just a little off about this entire thing. 

“Okay,” he says anyway because they need Deacon’s help. He doesn’t think about Nora. He doesn’t think about what could be happening to her as he stands up and holds out his hand so they can shake on it. He doesn’t. 

***

Nate is wrapped around her, all heavy limbs and soft breath against her side. She grins. It’s still dark outside and they don’t have to be up for hours yet to go to the doctor’s for another check-up. So she settles back against him and tries to go back to sleep. She squeezes her eyes shut, shifts, rubs her nose. It’s probably just nerves, but her heart is racing and her breath is just a little shallow. She’s been waiting for this appointment, looking forward to it even. They’re going to find out the sex of their baby today. She’s happy, but also apparently really nervous about it. 

She knows she won’t be able to go back to sleep, so she tries to sit up in bed. But she can’t. She’s paralyzed, or nearly. There’s something pinning her down, something wrapped around her hands and feet and around the top of her head. She struggles, strangles down a scream of frustration. 

_I do so enjoy seeing you like this,_ someone says. It doesn’t sound like her. The voice is smooth, but there’s something about it. Something. _Why don’t you come back, Nora?_

She squeezes her eyes shut against it, everything in her revolting against the idea of following that voice, following it in and out. 

Just a little longer. 

Just a little. 

She feels Nate beside her again and that knot in her chest lessens. Unties itself and let’s her take in a breath. She opens her eyes but there is nothing but blinding white light and eyes the color of blood. 

“I wondered when you’d come back, Nora,” the ghoul says, tracing his blunt nail along the length of her forearm. She struggles against her restraints, a sob wrenched from deep inside her chest. She wants it to be over. She wants it to end. This endless circle of nightmares. 

“Please,” she says, because it’s the only thing there is. She pleads and pleads and begs and begs. Please make it stop. Please let me go home. If she even still has one. It’s been forever and they still haven’t come for her. Do they even care anymore? Do they still love her? Are they even trying? 

“You know I can’t, Nora. I don’t know why you do this to yourself,” he says and she can’t help but curl into his words. There’s a strange, withering comfort to them. Just as there’s a strange comfort to the way he touches her. Maybe she’s just starved for human contact. Maybe she’s just...maybe. 

“That’s it,” he murmurs, his lips too close to her ear, his breath on her neck and his fingers filling up that hole inside of her. “That’s it.”

But then he leaves, wrenches himself away with too loud, bellowing laughter. Then there’s the sharp pinch in the crook of her arm. Warmth and dread. Choking her veins. Filling her with black tar and madness. She sinks and she falls and his cackling follows her down, down, down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been working on this chapter for a hot minute. I love the response the last chapter I got. I was SO NERVOUS to publish it, but of course, you guys have been and always be the greatest, so thank you to everyone who sent kudos and left comments. It means the world to me. Words can't express how grateful I am. You guys are what keep me pushing through and you are the reason why I want to keep going with this story. 
> 
> So here's to another chapter. I can't wait to hear what you think of it. <3
> 
> Also, sorry for any typos, etc. I was really excited to get an update out there.


	27. Yellow Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1,000,000 points if you get the chapter title reference. Redeemable for my infinite love.

It takes Deacon three solid days of shakedowns and IOUs and every cap they have, but he finds her. Winter and his goons are holed up in some abandoned pre-war warehouse on the northwestern edge of Boston. 

“No word on whether there are other people there, but my guy says that he’s seen Winter in the flesh,” Deacon says as soon as they enter the private room Hancock had secured for them inside the Third Rail. It’s bustling outside the door, the bar almost filled to capacity. Hancock’s doing. He’d promised everyone he saw that drinks were half off today, courtesy of their visiting mayor. A clever ruse to ensure that no one would be able to overhear their plans. That was the last thing they needed right now.

Deacon isn’t alone. He has another of his Railroad agents beside him. She doesn’t look unhappy exactly, just cautious, her eyes darting to and fro as Hancock and Nick take seats on the opposite side of the table from her and Deacon. To Hancock’s left is Robert MacCready and to Nick’s right is Sturges, both of whom had insisted on being part of the rescue party. 

“What exactly has your “guy” told you about Winter’s setup?” Hancock asks, his fingers slipping into his jacket. He’s nervous. They all are, the tension thick and electric hovering over all of them. 

“Not much. He’s been part of a couple of caravans out there. Special orders. Jet and guns and energy cells. Place is apparently consuming a lot of energy,” Deacon tells them. Nick’s stomach drops when he hears that. Who knows what Winter is using all that energy for. He doesn’t want to think about it too much. “And they never let them inside. They do all the business outside of the warehouse.”

“Anything about other entrances or about inside the building?” Hancock asks, his fingers finally coming out of his jacket with a packet of cigarettes rather than something a hell of a lot stronger. He offers the pack to Nick who slips one out with a little smile. He offers the pack to the room, but no one else takes one. Nick lights his own cigarette and then hands the lighter to Hancock. 

“Nada, Mayor,” Deacon says, “They’re kept under pretty heavy watch when they’re there.”

“So, we’re flying blind. Good to know this isn’t the total shit show I imagined it to be,” the other Railroad agent pipes up with a shake of her head and sigh. Deacon turns to look at her and there’s something that passes between them. A look that fills Nick with no small amount of suspicion. The same alarms that were going off when he had first approached Deacon are going off again. There’s something there, staring him right in the face, that he can’t quite catch. The possibility that Deacon, the same man he’s known for years, could betray them is enough to turn his stomach. 

He reaches for Hancock and grabs his hand beneath the table. To his credit, Hancock doesn’t react, just squeezes his hand as if to say I know. 

“Much as I’m enjoying all the tension in the room, can we stop pissing about and figure out what we’re gonna do?” MacCready says from Hancock’s other side. Deacon and Glory startle a little. Deacon just leans back in his seat, his face a perfect mask. But the other agent shoots him a guilt glance from beneath her fringe of white hair before looking down into her lap. Hancock squeezes his hand again, but there is nothing on his face either. He’d never noticed the similarities between him and Deacon before, but now that he is, he can’t unsee it. They’re both sure and strong and cocky as anything, and he knows they’d do anything for their friends. 

“Sorry,” Deacon says, not sounding it at all. 

He leans forward again and God help his soft heart, but the way that the other man looks now with that half smile on his face doesn’t fit words like betrayal. There’s no question there’s something going on behind those glasses, but he can’t believe that Deacon of all people would double-cross them. 

***

His stomach drops when they crest the hill and get their first look at the looming building. It isn't large, about three stories with a few sparse trees and shrubs framing the wide road leading into the front of it. According to Deacon’s informant, there were tunnels beneath, a basement level of sorts where they're most likely keeping Nora. There’s something off about it that immediately sets off warning bells. His heart is in his throat and the tips of his fingers are tingling when he realizes -

“No guards?” Glory asks to his left. 

“Odd,” Nick says from his other side. His elbow brushes Hancock’s arm as he gets to his feet. He nearly reaches for him, nearly holds the old bot back, but there's no point. Nick is up and gone before he can. Besides, he'd only break cover if he was sure that nobody would see. 

On the other end of their little quadron, Deacon hauls himself up after Nick. The rest of them soon follow suit. It’s clear there’s something more going on here than they’d anticipated. Eddie Winter wouldn’t just leave his front door unguarded. Unless the security inside was so good they didn’t need guards. Unless they were walking into something a lot more fucked up than they thought. 

“Any ideas here, D?” he asks from his spot at the back of their little cavalry. He’s holding his shotgun too hard and there’s sweat collecting beneath the brim of his tricorn and at the base of his neck, right where the collar of his coat is settled. It makes him sick to think of any possibility where they leave here empty handed. He thinks about reaching inside his jacket. He’s itching for a hit, but he owes it to Nora, to Nick, to all of them, to be present and aware and not completely out of his fucking mind.

“I got nothing, honestly. There’s only three things I can think of that we might be walking into. One, that this place isn’t where Winter is holed up. Two, that this place is so locked down that they don’t even need guards at the front door. And three, that they heard we were coming and jumped ship.”

“You think they would have had time? We only got the information yesterday,” Sturges says and Hancock grudgingly thinks he has a point. 

“Yeah, but I’ve been asking for three. If I tipped off the wrong person and word got back to Winter, then they definitely had enough time.”

“Doesn’t matter. Whether she’s in there or not, we owe it to her to find out.” This from MacCready who moves to walk past Nick towards the entrance. Before he can, though, Nick holds out a hand to all of them. 

“We can’t just charge in there without a plan. If they are waiting for us, we could all get blown sky high and if that happens, Nora’s as good as dead,” Nick says and there’s something so exact, so final in his voice that sends shivers of horror racing down his spine. 

“How about I scout it out and see what’s going on?” Deacon says and holsters his pistol.

“D., no,” Glory says with a shake of her head. She looks worried, a perfect mirror to the feelings buzzing around under his skin. 

“Glory-,” Deacon says with that trademark half-smile of his, but she cuts him off because he can charm his way into going rogue. 

“I said no. We can’t lose you,” she says, her eyes filled with fire. Hancock looks at Nick. He’s watching the two Railroad agents with a frown, eyes flitting back and forth between them, as if he’s trying to figure something out. He can’t help but remember the strange look they’d shared in the Rail. There’s something not quite right about all of this, but Nick seems to trust Deacon and the man had never gotten on Hancock’s bad side, so he didn’t see any reason not to believe that he really wanted to help them. It wasn’t that. Hancock believed that he wanted to help Nora get out of there, but as far as he knew, the other man had never even met her. It was all just a little off. 

“We don’t need to lose anyone,” Sturges says. There’s something paternal in his smile as he looks over his shoulder at the building again. “We were counting on the element of surprise, but it’s kind of sounding like we don’t have it anyway. Either they’re here and they don’t know about us; unlikely. Or they’re not here in which case it doesn’t matter. Or they know and they’re waiting for us to show up. Two out of three says that taking precautions won’t mean anything. They’re gonna figure it out eventually. I say we just throw caution to the wind and bomb the shit out of the front entrance and see what happens.” 

It’s the longest speech Sturges has made in front of him and Hancock can’t help the grin that stretches across his face. 

“See, Jimmy has the right idea. Why don’t Deacon and I set up a couple of frag mines and MacCready here can shoot them once we’re clear? Blow the front door off the place.”

Nick met his eyes. He could see that he didn't like the idea. But what other choice did they have? Any way he looked at it, they were fucked, and maybe this way they could lure some of Winter’s goons outside. 

“Let’s do it,” Deacon says before Nick can and that's that. Because when they get down to it, this is his operation. Not Nick’s, not Hancock’s. 

“Fine,” Nick says, nodding. When his eyes fall on John, he can see how much it costs him to say that, to give in to this frankly horrible plan. His pulse whooshes in his ears as he steps toward the other man and squeezes his hand. 

 

“We have to get her back, Nick,” he says and it seems like the right thing to say, because Nick sucks in a breath and nods. 

“We will,” he says, low enough so that only Hancock can hear him, the gentlest smile curling at the corners of his mouth. 

***

There are stars above her. Flickering, buzzing stars that make her grin. They are so close, she could reach out and pluck them from the sky. She could hold them to her chest and their light would fill her up. Expand inside of her heart and burn away all of the darkness. The ichor thick as mud and her blood as black as night. 

She startles when something blocks out the sky. The stars disappear and with it her salvation. The back of her throat starts to ache and her eyes burn. She knows what happens next. But then the thing above her begins to take shape. 

Dark, mottled skin, and bloodshot eyes, and a smile that makes her heart race. It isn't starlight, isn't her salvation, but it is close enough. It is bright enough. It burns her enough. It makes her forget. For those sweet, precious hours, she isn’t Nora. She isn’t anything. It is as close to the stars as she will ever be. 

“Nora,” he says, his words quiet and close and all for her. 

“Yes?” she says, her heart in her throat. His fingers flutter over the crook in her arm and she groans, her body surging upwards against her bonds. “Please.”

He meets her eyes and she can see something new there, something more, something hungry. His gaze flicks downwards for the briefest moment, but before he can do or say anything, the door to the room slams open. 

His eyes move towards the interruption, but his body is still curled around her, his hand warm and solid pressed against her hip. 

“Boss, we got a problem,” the man says.

His mouth opens to respond, but before he can, there is a deafening rumble above them and the sky falls down around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I have descended into the madness that is Hamilton. I listened to it for the first time two weeks ago and haven't stopped playing it since. I wish I hadn't wasted the last three years of my life, but better late than never right? 
> 
> In regards to this chapter, you guys, the end of this fic is so freaking close. Like I haven't outlined or anything, but I'm guessing maybe three more and then it'll be over. I can't believe it and it honestly makes me really sad considering how long I've been working on it, but these crazy kids deserve an ending, so there we are. As it is, the last few chapters are probably going to be long overdue (hopefully not, but Spring B is starting and I'll be taking three classes and yeah I'm stressed okay). I hope you guys enjoy and I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter! I love each and every one of you so, so much. I'm so excited for you to read it. <3


	28. Now I Just Sit In Silence

It’s chaos. The front entrance is a mess of charred wood and twisting metal. Their heavies, Hancock and Glory, dive in first, their guns swinging and their mouths curled at the corners. Nick And Deacon go next. Then Sturges and MacCready. 

The air is thick with dust and something charged. Anticipatory. Hancock takes point, leading them through winding hallways and tight corners. He can hear Mac and Sturges checking rooms as they go. 

By the time they find the stairs leading to the lower levels, they haven’t found a soul. He’s starting to sweat beneath his tricorn. He glances back towards Nick. It’s dark within the building. They must have knocked out the power. But Nick’s gaze, glowing in the dim light, goes straight through him. Something sharp and sudden and electric shoots through him. He can’t breathe for a moment, everything in him straining for some anchor of control. Then Nick nods and he takes in a ragged mouthful of air. They’ve got this. 

Just as he turns back to the stairs, he hears something in the darkness below. Shuffling and heavy breathing and quiet voices. Beside him, Glory’s hands shift on her gun and he knows she hears it too. He looks at her and she nods in the dark, her expression inscrutable. 

He goes first, his thighs shaking with the effort of keeping his steps light on the wrecked stairs. He follows it down several flights and just when he’s starting to wonder if it will ever end, it does. He rounds a corner and his heart nearly gives out as the lights flicker on, flooding his vision with nothing but bright white. 

“Fuck,” he mutters as he reaches up and rubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. He blinks a few times, trying to clear his sight. 

Just as his vision clears and he takes in the stairs below him and the two dozen or so of Winter’s cronies in the room beyond, he only has a moment to step back, pushing Glory further back up the stairs before gunfire splits the air.

***

The world is upside down and there is nothing but bright white light above her. Her ears are ringing and there is the sharp tang of blood in the air. She tries to sit up but she is bound, tied down to the table that has been her home for so many weeks. 

Below her, somewhere, someone is groaning and cursing as they come to. 

“Boss?” another, separate voice says, hoarse and out of breath. “Shit, boss!” 

“I’m fine, you moron. Is she alive?” 

“Yeah, seems alive enough.”

“Get her off the table,” he says. His voice is clearer now, closer like maybe he was on the other side of the room or on the ground. There is a moment of silence. A moment filled with tension that she can almost taste, thick and heavy in the back of her mouth. 

“Boss, you sure we should be doing that now?”

“Did I fucking stutter?” he says. He’s angry. She can almost see it. Almost feel it. 

“No, I just…”

“You just nothing, Price. I pay you to shut your mouth and do what I tell you to. Get her off that fucking table. Throw her in with the boy. She’s the point of all this and she’s useless right now. I made sure of that.” 

She laughs at that and once she starts, she can’t stop. Even as her shackles fall free. Even as she is hoisted to her feet, her arms thrown around Price’s neck and his arm around her waist. He’s right. She is useless. So fucking useless and when the laughing turns hysterical, turns painful and wretched inside of her, she feels it. He did this to her and she just let him. She had let herself be broken. 

She is still laughing even as she’s facing him again. Winter. The bastard that had killed Nick and destroyed her settlements. The laughing hurts but it is good. She can feel, even if it is only for this small space of time. He just watches her with those red eyes and that twisted, almost-amused smile. He watches and she feels everything inside of her twist, saliva filling her mouth, her stomach rolling. She hasn’t had a hit today, at least not that she can remember, but that is good too. Her mind is clear for the first time in weeks. She can feel and hear and think. 

He watches her. But she watches him too. Really looks at him. There’s that strange hunger in his eyes, but there’s something else too. Fear. Real honest to God fear. And she knows. 

Her stomach twists again and her arm shakes as she puts her hand to her mouth. She struggles against Price’s hold a little. 

“Please,” she says when his arm only tightens. “I need to…” 

A dry heave wracks through her and she falls, Price’s grip falling slack. She crashes to the ground, her knees groaning in protest as they hit split chunks of ceiling and the cement and the broken glass beneath. 

“Goddamnit,” Price says. She blocks it out, blocks everything out as she focuses on her roiling stomach and the shards beneath her and the pain hovering behind her eyes. She falls forward, hands braced on the ground. She heaves again and this time, there is burning in her throat, burning in her eyes, and the bile rushes up and up and out and it’s all she can do as she spills the meager contents of her stomach out. Her hands tighten on the ground, even as her body is wracked with pain. She tucks a shard of glass into her palm. 

When it’s done, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and reaches out behind her for Price with the other, making sure to make it look weak, like it’s an effort just to lift her arms. It’s not hard to pretend. He bends down over her. His hand closes around her own and she strikes, pulling him down towards her and swiping across the vulnerable column of his neck with the shard of glass. 

There is panic, terror, in his eyes as he realizes what’s happened. What is going to happen. Understanding fills his gaze. He lets go of her and his knees give out. He hits the ground beside her. He reaches up as if he could close the wound with just the touch of his hand. But it’s too deep and there is too much blood. She just smiles as she tugs his gun free from the holster at his waist. She clicks off the safety and aims the pistol at Winter’s head. 

She savors the look of unadulterated terror on his face for a moment. Just a moment before she pulls herself to her feet, using the table in the middle of the room as leverage. Price falls forward and lands on his face, gurgling helplessly as the pool of blood around him continues to grow. 

“Not as useless as you thought, Winter,” she says before she pulls the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me FOREVER to write this chapter, but once I started, I couldn't stop. Also, I already have the next chapter written too, so you guys should be seeing that before the end of this coming weekend. Also, there's maybe one more chapter after that at most, so get ready for the end you guys. 
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! All the comments and kudos and everything makes me so freaking happy, I can't even tell you how much. Thank you guys for everything! <3 <3 <3


	29. Another Graceless Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to "Machine" by Scott Helman. Go now! It gives me all the Nick feels.

It takes more time than he’d like to admit to clear the room. They’re all sweaty and haggard and covered in various bruises by the time the last of Winter’s men falls, a point-blank shot to his chest courtesy of Deacon. 

“Jesus Christ,” Glory says, leaning against a desk and sweeping her silver hair out of her eyes with a sigh. It’s then that a shot rings out, muffled, but clear enough that they’re all moving forward without a moment’s hesitation. There are two doors. One that looks to lead farther into the building and the other…. He motions for Glory and MacCready to check it while he and the others lean up against the wall next to the other door. They sneak off and it’s only a few minutes before they come back. 

“Dead end,” Mac says simply and they both fall in line. Hancock nods and steels himself for what promises to be another tough fight. 

“Ready?” he says. 

“Yeah,” come their soft replies. He nods again and then they’re off. The door they take opens into a narrow hallway lined with flickering overhead lights. He fights against a headache that’s pulsing at the back of his head. He needs to be here. He needs to be present. 

There are a few doors along their way. He points Glory and MacCready to check one, Nick and Deacon to check another, and he and Sturges check the last one. They all whip their respective doors open at the same time. He ducks around the edge of the doorway, swinging his shotgun around. It’s just a supply closet, nothing inside but old cleaning supplies and a few skittering radroaches.

“Shit,” he says as one of the bugs takes notice of him and skitters towards the door. He closes the door again. He turns and Sturges is just looking at him with a knowing smirk. 

“Don’t give me that, Jimmy,” he says, chuckling a little bit as the man claps him on the shoulder. 

“Nah I get it, man.”

The other two rooms are empty too. Just as Nick and Deacon duck out of their room, there’s another shot and this time, they hear a shout. Something sharp and definitely male. He lets himself look at Nick just for a moment before turning and taking off back down the hallway. He can see it now, the hallway opening up into what looks to be a central hub. He checks the room and sees no one inside, so he waves them all forward. They all spread out, three on the left side and three on the right. There are two rooms on the left side and one more room on the right along with another dark hallway. 

Nick, Deacon, and Glory take the left side and he takes the right side with Sturges and MacCready. There’s something warm and writhing in his stomach. They’re close. He can feel it. He nods at MacCready towards the unexplored hallway. 

“Watch our backs,” he says. Mac sets up and he and Sturges move to the door. He opens it. The door swings on its hinge with a groan and he almost gags at the smell. The sour, stagnant air spills out and it’s all he can do to cover his nose and mouth with his sleeve before he ducks inside. Despite himself, despite knowing how important Nora is, how Winter wouldn’t dare kill her before achieving whatever twisted goal he had, he can’t help the way his stomach twists as he takes in the bodies, all of them in various states of decay. The bodies are bloated and red and he can’t look. He turns from them, half-falling against the wall as he heaves up the contents of his stomach. 

His insides are still rioting when he straightens and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. He glances at Sturges who is staring at the scene with a mixture of anger and devastation warring in his eyes. 

“He left them in here to die. He left them -,” Sturges says and cuts himself off before he can continue. The hand that isn’t holding his gun curls into a fist and even from where he is, Hancock can see his whitening knuckles, the tremor in his arm. 

“Jimmy, let’s get out of here. There’s nothing we can do now,” he forces himself to say. It’s true. The can’t move the bodies. Not now. The thought of it, of wrapping his fingers around the bodies, knowing what will happen when they do, he can’t. 

Sturges nods and they file out of the room. When they do, the others are all out in the open room, all gathered around the entrance to the hallway. Hancock just closes the door behind them, sparing one last glance at the fallen settlers. He tries not to think about what Nora will do when she finds out. 

“Anything?” Nick asks. Hancock meets his eyes and he knows how ashen he must look, how crestfallen and helpless.

“The settlers. They’re all dead,” Sturges says before going silent again. They all go quiet, Glory and Deacon shifting on their feet with equally disturbed expressions. MacCready just looks away, down the hallway, down into the dark. Nick doesn’t move, but he can see it anyway. His golden eyes soften and his mouth falls slack. Hancock only moves forward, the others parting so he can pass. 

He grabs Nick’s hand and squeezes his fingers, the warmth and metal smell of him settling around him, comforting despite the horror hiding behind that door. Nick’s hand is slack in his own for a moment before squeezing back. He tucks a smile inside his heart. He let’s go of Nick’s hand and moves past him down the hallway, the others following behind him, the air so less oppressive the further they get into the building. 

Unlike the last one, this corridor has no doors and no lights. They follow it along. It’s dead silent now, no more shouts, no gunshots, nothing but their own breathing and the scuffs of their shoes on the concrete. He tries not to think about what they’re going to find down here. He tries not to think about Winter on the other end of this hallway, waiting for them with that hideous grin with Nora in his arms, at his mercy. Tries not to think about the alternative. That gunshot, the shout.

_What if. What if. What if._

It’s a mantra in his head, refusing to abate no matter how tightly he grips his gun, no matter how much he tries to push it away. 

Ahead, he hears the groan of a door opening. His heart leaps and he tries not to rush forward to see who it is. The room beyond them is bright, brighter than any other part of the building and he only has a moment to wonder why before a figure fills the doorway. He freezes, shotgun trained on their chest and he feels Glory shift so that she can do the same from his other side. They’re close enough to the entrance that he knows the figure can see them, knows that they know who they are and what they’re here to do. 

But they don’t do anything, don’t raise the pistol they’re gripping in their right hand, don’t duck out of the way before they can shoot. No response. And he knows. 

“Nora,” he says, breath leaving him all in a rush as he lowers his gun and trips over his own feet in his rush to get to her. He’s almost there, his fingers brushing against her cold, dry skin when she finally moves. She stumbles backward, nearly falling in her haste. 

He follows her, his eyes aching, mouth dry. His throat bobs with the force of it even as his eyes adjust to the bright lights. She’s here. So close. So close. But her eyes are too bright, darting to and fro as the others spill out of the hallway with him, all of them fanning out. He can see Nick in his periphery, his tan coat and his eyes and that gaping hole in his neck. He can’t imagine that the other man is doing any better than he is. 

“Nora,” Nick manages. He holds his hands up, showing her that he isn’t going to shoot her. 

She’s green as she looks at him, her eyes impossibly wide and her lip quivering. She shakes her head. 

“No, no,” she says, backing up further until her back hits the wall. “You can’t be here.”

He doesn’t dare to look away from her, doesn’t dare to breathe as she slides to the floor, the pistol clattering against the ground as she lets it go to grip her head. 

“You’re not real. You’re not real. You’re not real,” she chants, voice ragged, her chest rising and falling too fast. He finally looks at Nick and sees the same helpless expression on the other man’s face. He’s in free fall, his thoughts are tightening whirlpool of jagged edges slicing him up from the inside. What did Winter do to her? 

And just like that, he hardens himself, anger flooding him along with the pain. He wields it like a shield, blocking out anything else. 

“Find that son of a bitch,” he says to the room, not taking his eyes off of her. Immediately, the others spread out in search of him. He must be here. He has to be. Whether he’s dead or no, he has to be sure. Winter deserves to rot for this and so much more. 

“Nora,” Nick says again, soft enough that he has to strain to hear. He takes a step forward, hands still up. She's so wrapped up in her own head that she doesn't do anything as the bot steps closer. Nick gets close enough to kick her pistol away and then he's on her, dipping down to wrap her in his arms and half pulling her into his lap. She stills, freezes in his arms, as he presses a kiss to the top of her head and starts to run his hand through her hair. 

“Nora it's me. We're here. We've got you,” Nick mutters. Hancock’s heart squeezes, the organ held in an iron grip. His breath is painful as it leaves him and it's all he can do to go to them. He stumbles forward, setting his gun on the ground as he sinks beside them, his legs shaking. 

“Nora,” he says, voice choked. Nick looks up at him and pulls him in too, arm tight and warm around his shoulders. They're a mess of limbs and tears and shuddering breaths. It's so quiet, so fucking quiet, and it's then that she sobs. She sobs and gasps in air and when she finally let's go of her head to look at them both, her eyes are shining and her mouth is curled into the softest, most heartbreaking smile he's ever seen. 

“I didn't think I'd ever see you again,” she says. He feels himself smile as he leans forward to wipe away her tears. She closes her eyes. 

“We wouldn't leave you here,” he says. She opens her eyes again and they are nothing short of haunted. It sends a pang shooting through his heart.

“I know,” she says, but she means something else. They don't have a chance to say anything else as Deacon and MacCready step into the room again with Winter dragged between them. They toss him on the ground and Hancock rises to his feet, taking his shotgun with him. The man before him wriggles and twists to flip himself over. He nearly laughs at how pathetic it is. 

The old ghoul’s eyes widen when he takes in the scene, his sharp gaze flitting between Nick and Nora entwined, the group at large covered in his own men’s blood, and Hancock at the center of all of it, his face set in a dark grin. 

“Lovely to see you here, Ed,” he says now, looking at the blooming red in his shoulder, in his thigh. All Nora’s handiwork. 

“I wish I could say the same,” Winter replies. 

Hancock doesn’t reply, just lets the silence fester for a few long moments. Then he grins wider and motions at Winter’s wounds. 

“You know, I have every reason to let you bleed out, nice and slow, but I think we both know I can’t let that happen. A radroach like you, you’d just come back meaner and even more full of yourself.” 

Winter looks up at him and he can see the danger in those eyes, cold and calculating, send shudders up and down his spine. 

“Don’t you want to know what I know?” Winter says. Every word is drawn out, pronounced like he’s savoring them before the final blow. His eyes move past Hancock to look right at Nora. “About Father and his little time-bending experiments?” 

Hancock’s heart stops. Behind him, around him, they all take a collective breath. He turns and finds Nora staring, unblinking, at Winter, her expression wavering between betrayal and hurt and fury. As soon as he looks at her, her eyes lift to his. He can only stare at her, not knowing what to say, what to do, to help her. He knew the Institute was wrong, he knew that Winter was twisted, but this...he can’t comprehend this. 

But Nora, she seems to set herself. Align something in herself as she starts to push herself up on her weak legs. Her expression grows harder and when she holds out her hand for the gun she’d found, there is nothing left of horror or pain on her face. Nothing but cold and dark. 

Nick hands her the gun, his own face crestfallen, but resigned too. He has just as much at stake here as Nora does, just as much riding on the fate of this one man, but somehow, it seems right to let Nora mete out justice. 

She shakes as she shuffles over the floor towards Winter. She stops at Hancock’s side and he has to fight against every instinct to reach out to her. 

“You have one chance, Winter, to tell us what you know. One chance,” she says, voice just as unforgiving as her face is. “I would choose your next words very carefully.” The threat lingers in the air. 

Winter makes a show of it, and that’s all it is. A fucking show, a joke. He shifts, looks down at the ground, wrings his hands a little bit. But there’s a light in his eyes that wasn’t there before. A light that Hancock wants to snuff out with his bare hands. He wants to choke the life from the other ghoul, wants to kill him in the most painful, slowest of ways possible. 

When Winter finally looks up at Nora, Hancock knows this is it. The tension in the air is thick enough to cut. His own heart is pounding, hands slick on his shotgun. But Nora, she is hard next to him. She watches Winter shift and shuffle and play coy on the ground. That’s all she does. Just watches. She is a book and for the first time, he finds that he can't read her. Can't discern what might be going on behind her verdant eyes. He shifts his gaze to Winter and waits for her move. 

“He knew what I was. He knew what I would do to you when I got my hands on you. So he brought me back. He twisted and folded time just so I could come back to break you,” Winter said, lips curling back to reveal a nasty, toothy grin. “We were meant to have more time. So much more time. Oh, the things I had planned for you.” 

His words come faster and faster now as if he wants to strike at her as much as he can for as long as he has left. He wants her to feel it, the truth of this, like poison festering in her wounds, both seen and unseen. Hancock can see her from his periphery, the gun in her hand shaking. He can hear her accelerated respiration, can almost see her widened eyes and the thoughts trip, trip, tripping inside of her brain. 

“Why?” she manages to say and in that one word, he can hear the breaking. He has half a mind to just raise his own gun and blow the fucker’s head off, but he doesn’t. It’s her call, it’s her life to take. 

“The things I had planned for you.” Winter just grins and he knows, deep in his heart, that they won’t get anything more from him. No matter how long they wait, no matter what they do to him. Nora must realize it too because she just raises the pistol and pulls the trigger. Mac and Deacon only have a moment to move out of the way. The bullet hits him right between his eyes, blood, and brain splattering the ground as he falls back, a last smirk plastered to his face and the haunting imprint of his laughter echoing through the room. 

“Son of a bitch,” Mac says, taking a step forward and kicking the body with the toe of his boot. Hancock resists the urge to do the same thing. He turns instead to Nora whose face is just as devoid of emotion, just as cold and shuttered, as before. He hesitates to touch her, hand half outstretched like he doesn’t know how to reach across that void and maybe he doesn’t. It hangs there. She knows. It’s obvious in the way that she keeps looking at everything _but_. It’s only a moment, but it feels like forever before his hand falls back to his side. He opens his mouth, but the words just won’t come. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn’t know how to cross the sudden rift between them. 

Hancock is so wrapped up in his own head that he doesn’t realize Nick is by his side until Nora turns towards him. Nick’s fingers brush his aching palm and he grabs his hand like a lifeline. Nick squeezes his hand once and he can feel everything in the touch. It shoots through him, arcing lightning and liquid fire. He feels it all the way down to his toes. 

Nick lifts his other hand, the metal fingers unfolding for her to take. Her eyes follow the motion, but she doesn’t move. She stares and stares and stares and there is nothing on her face, nothing in her eyes of the old Nora, of the woman they both love. 

When the moment has gone on too long, when he’s sure she won’t take his hand, Nick lets his arm fall too. He can’t be sure, but he thinks her shoulders fall. 

“Home?” Nick says, his voice deceptively light, nonchalant, safe. She stares at him a moment before she turns away from him. His stomach drops, but Nick squeezes his hand again. It doesn’t loosen the tightness in his chest, the impossible stretch of distance between the two of them and her. 

“I need to do something first,” she says and starts to lead them farther into the warehouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've been screaming for a week waiting to let you guys know what happens next for these crazy kids. I'm well into the next chapter and I'm so excited for you guys to read it. Thank you for every comment, every kudo, every bookmark and subscription. This has been the craziest road and I've loved every moment of it, even when the old muse had no motivation. I'm so happy people are reading and enjoying this as much as I am. 
> 
> Thank you guys!! Can't wait to hear what you thought of this chapter! <3 <3


	30. Some and Now None of You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.....the end of this chapter is pretty intense. Also, while I did not intend for this to happen, this will probably be the last chapter of this fic, but not of this series, so please subscribe to either me or to the series and then you will know when I publish the next work. Hope you enjoy!

Nora’s legs are shaking, but she keeps pushing forward. She can’t sit still, can’t imagine what she’ll do when she can’t move anymore. Nick and Hancock are at her back. She can feel them, can feel their heat and their eyes and their concern. She can almost taste it in the back of her mouth. She doesn’t think about the two of them holding hands. She doesn’t think about them trying to touch her. She doesn’t think about anything as she makes her way further into the warehouse. 

She fights the sudden wave of nausea that sweeps through her. She fights the tremors in her hands, she fights the pounding of her heart and the cold sweat that’s collecting on the back of her neck, at the small of her back. 

She tries not to think about everything that’s happened, everything that might still happen. Nick is alive. Nick is alive and they came to save her. She’s going to get out of here. She is free. It still feels like a lie she has to tell herself. It still feels like at any moment, she’ll wake up again strapped to that fucking table.

She finds what she’s looking for after a few minutes. The dark hallway she is leading them down opens up into a dimly lit space that’s lined on the left side by several metal doors. Her heart jumps, her breath rushing out of her all at once. The memories are bright and thick here, pushing at the back of her throat. She sways on her feet and it’s only the thought of that little boy sitting in his cell all alone for weeks that gets her to move, to swallow down her fear. She stumbles forward and starts opening the doors. After a moment, Deacon goes to the other end and does the same. The others stay back and watch. 

The first two cells she checks are empty. Her gut clenches painfully, that oil slick fear pressing and pressing and pressing at her. Deacon doesn’t find anything either. By the time they’re both standing in front of the last door, she’s faint. It takes everything in her to reach for the door handle. She flinches when Deacon sets his hand on her own. She can’t help but look at him as she starts to pull away. He just tightens his hold on her hand. He has his sunglasses on, because of course he does, even in the dim light, but his mouth is curled at the corner. There’s nothing arrogant behind it, nothing of the Deacon she’d first met all those years ago. No hint of the man who’d once given her his call code as a joke, who told her never to trust anyone. It’s just Deacon, her friend, and somehow he knows. He remembers.

“Together?” he says and she finds herself relaxing. She nods before facing the door again, his hand warm and heavy around hers. 

They open the door. It’s dark inside and as what little light is inside the room slips inside, she almost cries out loud when she sees something, _someone_ , shifting in the shadows. She clears her throat, aware of every pound of her heart, of every breath, and every tremble of her fingers as she pushes the door wider. She tries so hard not to hope, but it’s there anyway, star-bright clinging to every nerve ending.

“Kid?” she says, her stomach twisting and her heart leaping as a figure emerges from the darkness. He’s shorter than she thought he would be, his fingers wrapped in the ragged edges of his worn shirt. His eyes dart between her and Deacon. 

“What’s going on?” he says. His voice is wobbling and it breaks her heart to hear it. “The ceiling was shaking and I heard gunshots.” 

“It’s okay now,” she says and there must be something that he sees because he takes a step forward. And another until he’s within arms length from her. He looks up into her face and it takes everything in her not to close the distance and take him into her arms. His eyes are hard. Too hard for a little boy, although she knows in this new world, there is nothing to be but hard if you want to survive. 

“Is he dead?” the kid says and it occurs to her that she doesn’t know his name, doesn’t know anything about him other than that his family abandoned him. This time, she steps closer and when she folds him into her embrace, he doesn’t move away. He wraps his arms around her middle and if his arms are a little too tight around her, she doesn’t say anything about it. 

“Kid, they’re all dead,” she says. 

***

By the time they pick a spot to camp, she’s spent. Her legs are shaking, her breath is sharp and painful and too fast, her head is pounding. And she knows not all of it is exhaustion. It feels like every nerve is on fire. It feels like she’s slowly unraveling. 

The kid - _Caleb, his name is Caleb_ \- is still next to her and every once in a while, she feels his hand brush against her, like he has to keep reminding himself that she’s there, like he can’t quite believe this is real. She can’t blame him. She can’t really believe it herself. The sky is above them, the Commonwealth giving them a rare, cloudless day. Birds are singing, the sun is shining from where it sits low in the sky, but she feels sick. Like there’s still something wrong, like…

“Fixer,” Deacon says beside her. She can’t help it when she scrambles away from him when his hand touches her elbow. She can't explain it. She can't describe why it feels so much more now for him to touch her, in this bright, open space. 

“Don’t touch me,” she says, her voice containing more bite than she’d meant for it to have. 

Everyone is watching her. She doesn’t need to see Deacon’s eyes to know she’s upset him. She can see it in the set of his mouth, in the stiffness of his shoulders, in the hand that’s still raised, fingers still curled around empty air. She fights down the bile rising in her throat, fights the panic and the sick, twisting turmoil in her gut. She opens her mouth but she has nothing to say. She closes it again and backs another step away, twisting the hem of her shirt just to have something to hang onto. 

Guilt and sorrow and unending dread twist and twist into a tighter circle inside of her chest. She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what to do. She looks down at the ground and wills herself not to cry. There’s movement off to her left, footsteps that draw closer. She doesn’t look up. Can’t lift her head to look.

“Come on,” Hancock says, low enough that only she can hear. He doesn’t touch her. Just moves past her, close enough to feel the heat through that faded old coat of his, close enough to touch if she could only lift her arm. He leads her away from the others, towards the small patch trees off in the distance. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t even look back to see if she’s following him. 

It’s only when they duck into the trees when they’re mostly hidden from everyone else that he turns toward her. And when she meets his eyes, sees the look on his face, lightening lances through her. His expression is nothing short of devastated. She wants to close the distance between them, wants to step into the warm circle of his arms. But she can’t. She can’t and it’s enough to break her heart all over again. 

“Hancock,” she manages. Her voice breaks on his name. Just those two syllables are full of everything that she can’t say, that she can’t shake. 

He takes a half step towards her. That thing inside of her writhes. It thrashes and she only has a moment to spin away before she’s throwing up into a small, dying patch of grass off to her left. She feels him at her side. His hands slide up into her hair, holding the strands away from her face. Her stomach riots. She heaves and heaves and heaves, but nothing comes up but bile. Her throat is on fire, her tongue coated with sick. But Hancock is there. Strong and solid and patient at her side. 

“You’re okay. Just let it out. That’s it,” he’s saying above her and she wants to cry at how gentle his voice is, how quiet. It’s like he doesn’t want to scare her like he could ever scare her. Her entire arm is shaking when she lifts her hand to grab at one of his. He tucks her hair into one of his hands and grabs her reaching fingers with the other. His skin slides against her and that thing in her stomach quiets a little. 

He holds her through it all and even when she straightens, she doesn’t let go of his hand. She knows she’s holding him too tight, she knows that, but she can’t seem to ease her fingers, can’t seem to loosen her grip on him now that she’s touching him. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and almost laughs when he hands her his flask. 

“It ain’t water, but it’ll do,” he says with a knowing little smile as she tips her head back and fills her mouth with whiskey, careful not to put her mouth on the flask. She swishes her mouth with the alcohol for a few seconds and then spits it out off to the side. Her mouth still feels disgusting, but she supposes there’s nothing for it. She hands the flask back. Hancock takes a swig and then tucks it back into one of the inner pockets of his coat. Just like that, her thoughts are spiraling. She watches, mesmerized, as the coat folds back across his chest, as his hand falls back to his side. Her heart is a thundering herd between her ears, her blood rushing like molten lava in her veins. 

_Do it. Do it. Reach._

The voice is insistent, pushing her hand forward, and before she can tell that voice to go to hell, her fingers are on Hancock’s chest. He’s warm, always so warm. She meets his eyes and melts a little against him. He smiles and it’s so soft, so sad, that her heart aches even as her stomach twists again. She knows then that she can’t do this. She can’t do it. Not to him. Not to Nick. She ducks her head and steps into the warm circle of his arms so she won’t have to look him in the eyes. His arms go around her waist. He’s holding her too tightly, but she doesn’t mind it, likes it even. She closes her eyes and just breathes in his scent, soaks in the warmth of him. 

“God, I missed you,” Hancock says into her hair. 

“I missed you too,” she says and marvels at the steadiness of her own voice. “Every day I missed you.” 

Beyond the tight circle of his arms, she can hear the others. Laughter and quiet conversation as they set up camp. She doesn’t have long. She stretches up. Her calves burn and her legs tremble, but she keeps on until she can reach that patch of skin under his jaw, right over his pulse that she knows drives him wild and kisses him. She lets her teeth scrape against his skin. He shudders, a growl loosening in his chest and electrifying the space between them, and then he’s on her, driving them both back into the trunk of a tree. She moans, back arching, as he kisses her neck, his hands touching every part of her body he can reach. And while he’s distracted, while she moans and pants for him, one of her hands clings to his waist while the other dips into the inside pockets of his coat. She finds what she’s looking for fairly quickly, the canister of Jet warm from the heat of him. Her stomach rolls and for a terrifying moment, she thinks she might be about to throw up again, but she forces herself to breathe, forces her fingers to close around the inhaler.

Hancock’s lips move slowly up her neck and she thinks this is it. Her moment to pull away. His lips go up, up, up until he nips at her earlobe. And despite herself, she feels it all the way to her core. Everything tightens inside of her. It’s only then she realizes his fingers are low on her hips, hand threatening to dip below the waistband of her jeans. She cants her hips upward and it’s only when his hand follows the motion that she lets herself lift the Jet out of his pocket. 

“Shit, Nora,” Hancock says as his fingers slide down and down into the wet heat gathered at her core. She just bucks against him, a silent command that he’s all happy to follow. Her head falls back against the tree. She slips the Jet into her back pocket and as soon as her other hand is free, she snatches at the lapels of his coat. She’s so close, even with just this. 

“Please,” she whispers and if his groan is anything to go by, he’s just as lost as she is. One of his fingers pushes up into her and she has to press her face into his shoulder to stop herself from crying out. She’s wound so tight that it only takes a few pumps of his clever hand before she’s coming. 

Her orgasm rushes through her and she sees stars, broken and shifting in the dark behind her closed lids. She sinks against him, arms clinging to his shoulders to keep herself from collapsing against the tree behind her. 

“John,” she says and feels his cock twitch against her stomach. His finger slips out of her and she can feel the wet, sticky trail of her own cum on her stomach as he pulls his hand out of her pants. 

“Yeah, sunshine?” he says, drawing an old handkerchief out of his coat. Her heart is in her throat. It’s all she can do to watch him and wait and see. He can’t know that she’s taken the Jet. He can’t know that she used him, used him so thoroughly that she’d gotten lost in it as much as he had. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid._

But he just wipes his hands and puts the rag back into one of his pockets. The smile on his face is a slow and lazy slant of his lips and she feels something break inside of her. There is something wrong with her, so fundamentally wrong. 

“Nothing, I just,” she trails off, eyes turning towards the darkening sky and the flicker of firelight just beyond the thick copse of trees. For a moment, neither of them have anything to say and she hates how that canister burns in her pocket. Hates that even now, her entire body alights with trepidation, with the anticipation that soon, it will get its due. 

Hancock steps toward her, his fingers gentle on her chin as she is forced to meet his gaze. Her heart seizes and everything in her screams at her to get away, to run, but she doesn’t move. She can’t. So she looks and looks at him, wondering what he could possibly be seeing on her face. 

His expression is serious, more serious than she thinks she’s ever seen it, as he stares down at her. His eyes trace every line, every patch of dirt, every splatter of blood and sweat that she’s endured over the past 12 hours. 

“I know things aren’t back to what they were. Hell, maybe they never will be, but you have me and Nick. You have that kid and you have all your friends. We’re here and we’re not going anywhere, okay?” he says. She nods, not knowing what to say as guilt burns through her, as her eyes turn watery with her grim smile. 

“We can do anything together. If that means fucking off to the middle of nowhere to take an early retirement, we’ve got your back. If that means taking on the Institute again, we’ve got your back. You have us, no matter what.” 

With that, he leans forward to press a gentle, lingering kiss on her brow and then steps away, making his way back to the others. She watches after him longer than she’d dare admit. She watches after him and tries to fight the itch of her fingers, the salt-slick slide of the cold sweat starting to form all over her body, and the tremble of her nerves as it calls to the drug she has shoved in her pocket. But it’s been too long, it’s been _forever_ since she had a hit and she needs it, needs it like she needs air and water and food. Needs it more than any of the others combined. 

So she turns her back to them, her family, her friends, and slips the canister of Jet out of her pocket. Her hands are shaking and her mouth is bone-dry, every inch of her quaking with the anticipation of release. She brings the inhaler to her lips, her chest loosening a sob even as she pushes down on the canister and Jet fills her lungs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, this is crazy. I can't believe that I made it to chapter 30. I can't believe that I finished this fic. I can't believe any of it. 
> 
> So just a few things as far as the timeline of the rest of this fic...I am going into my finals week in two weeks, so that had a lot to do with my decision to end the fic here. I will probably be working on the next work in the series during that time, but I wanna say the earliest that it will be published is maybe the middle of May. Hopefully, I can get a few chapters under my belt by then though, so the wait between chapters won't be as long. So, make sure to subscribe to either the series [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/604726) or to my author page [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohhstark) so that you can know when I update. 
> 
> Regarding the other reason I decided to end the fic here, it just felt right that it should end here. I could go on and on and on and on about these characters and about the liberties I've taken with all of them for this story, but I really hope you guys like where this is going. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better for Nora and a lot of the same themes that were featured in the last quarter of this fic will feature heavily in the next one. I hope you guys are ready, I know I am. I'm so freaking excited I can't even. 
> 
> And finally (I promise) I want to thank everyone who has commented and sent kudos and subscribed and all of it. This fic has turned into something so big and so much more than I ever thought it would be. Like I started I Got Stamina just kind of as a side project, but then it became this behemoth that I can't seem to stop writing. I have so much planned for our trio and I hope you guys stick around to see what happens. Thank you all so much! <3 <3 <3


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